INTHEBLACK August 2024 - Flipbook - Page 43
A Productivity Commission
report finds industry levies
are proliferating in Australia.
Little is known about the
impact of levies on productivity
growth and industry behaviour.
Issues with industry levies include
design, cost of collection and, in
some cases, double taxation.
Levies:
A tax by
another name
Industry levies are proliferating in Australia, but when levy
design deviates from good tax system design, there are
implications for the economy.
Words Gary Anders
American author John Steinbeck
was possibly thinking of Australia’s new
Wine Grapes Levy, introduced in 1929,
when penning his novel The Grapes of Wrath
in the 1930s.
The Wine Grapes Levy, Australia’s
first industry levy, was introduced by the
Stanley Bruce Government to help finance
marketing, research and development for the
rapidly growing grape industry.
Australian industry levies were
traditionally seen as a way to ensure that
agricultural, fisheries and forestry producers
contributed to the funding of collective
services and strategies activities within
their respective sectors.
Today, increasingly, some of these levies
are generating widespread industry wrath.
After progressively being rolled out across
other agricultural sectors by consensus
for similar purposes as the Wine Grapes
Levy, which still exists, levies have since
been imposed by federal, state and territory
governments. The levies apply to a broad range
of sectors including telecommunications,
banking, insurance, energy, manufacturing,
gambling, insurance and construction.
After numbering just four in 1960 and
26 in 1980, there are now 248 individual
industry levies that collectively raise about
A$11 billion per year in Australia – more
than six times the revenue raised from tariffs.
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