Retail giant Coles said on Saturday that the Coalition's proposed 1.7 percent company tax on Australia's largest companies is more likely to carry soft impact on consumer goods prices even as company managing director Ian McLeod stressed that he was more concern on rising utility bills than the planned levy.

The Coalition vowed to impose the additional tax in order to fund the paid parental leave scheme but the federal government countered that such initiative could result to increasing food prices and eventually defeat the purported benefits meant to be enjoyed by the public.

Mr McLeod told ABC that the levy would have minimal impact if any, as he added that the government should be more concerned on increasing utility bills throughout Australia where electricity rates have been spiking up by almost 20 percent.

He said that such upward movements of utility costs would have "more material impact in terms of our cost base than any sort of other changes to government policy either one way or the other," and effectively reducing the proposed levy as merely another form of business challenges that Coles has to deal with.

Mr McLeod asserted that there are numerous cost aspects that influence the operation of any business, specifying that companies put more weight on "natural rise in wage inflation, the natural rise in energy costs and the natural rise in transport costs."

He said that such considerations carry more significant impacts on businesses than the miniscule levy that the Coalition is eyeing to implement.