Opposition leader Bill Shorten is backing away from his plan to scrap company tax cuts for medium-sized businesses, meaning Labor will go into the next election with plans to keep the current company tax scheme as it is.

It was only a few days ago that Mr. Shorten said a Labor government would repeal corporate tax cuts for businesses with a turnover of between $10 million and $50 million.  But the ABC reports Mr. Shorten's quick turnaround came after a shadow cabinet meeting in which party members pressured him to back off.

"I now accept that simply stopping at $10 million would have created more confusion, uncertainty," he said.  "We do recognise calls in recent days that if a tax reduction has already been implemented and companies are paying that lower tax rate now we did not want to cause confusion and uncertainty to those businesses."

But Labor will draw the line at another round of corporate tax cuts that would drop the rate to 25 percent.