Navigation: Previous Page | Contents | Next Page
Minerals Resource Rent Tax Amendment (Protecting
Revenue) Bill 2013
Introduced into the House of
Representatives on 11 February 2013
By:
Mr Bandt MP
1.1
This bill seeks
to amend the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Act 2012 to provide that a
mining royalty modification should be disregarded for the purposes of working
out the amount of a royalty credit. The intention of this amendment is to
protect the revenue generated from the Minerals Resource Rent Tax from being
eroded by state governments increasing royalties.[1]
This bill proposes to amend the Minerals
Resource Rent Tax Act 2012
to clarify that it was the intention of the principal Act that companies
subject to the minerals resource rent tax may claim a credit for royalty
payments made to State governments only at the level which applied as of
1 July 2011, and that subsequent increases in royalties not be taken into
account for this purpose.
Compatibility with human
rights
1.2
The bill is accompanied
by a self-contained statement of compatibility which states that the bill does
not engage any of the applicable human rights and freedoms, and is therefore
compatible with human rights.
1.3
To the extent
that the bill seeks to ‘clarify’ the intention of the principal Act and that
‘clarification’ is not the meaning that would be attributed to the Act on
ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, it may give rise to issues of
retrospectivity in the imposition of liability for tax and of liability to
related penalties and offences.
1.4
However, the
statement notes that the bill would affect only bodies corporate and that
therefore the human rights in the relevant treaties (which are enjoyed by
natural persons) do not apply. It is generally considered to be the position
that the UN human rights treaties confer rights only on natural persons;
however, it has been accepted that there might be circumstances in which the
regulation of corporations may have an indirect impact on the rights of natural
persons that would engage the treaties.
1.5
The
committee considers that this bill does not appear to give rise to human rights
concerns.
Navigation: Previous Page | Contents | Next Page
Top
|