Deregulation Budget Package to save businesses $1.6 billion

The Morrison Government is cutting more red tape through the Deregulation Agenda’s Budget 2022-23 package so Australian businesses can keep more of what they earn.

The package will deliver $1.6 billion in savings over four years making it easier for Australian businesses to operate.

Around 1,200 fuel and alcohol businesses will also save close to $20 million each year in compliance costs.

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ben Morton, said the package will lift productivity, boost employment and support Australia’s economic recovery.

“Our excise changes make it easier for our world-leading beverage manufacturers to do what they do best,” Minister Morton said.

“We’ve listened to their frustrations – we’re fixing long-standing tax administration burdens faced by our fuel refiners and distributors.”

These changes deliver significant deregulation benefits for fuel and alcohol producers, importers and distributors by streamlining cumbersome and unnecessary processes.

This includes simplifying licensing arrangements, removing overlapping tax administration at the border, and better aligning excise payments with other taxes paid by small businesses.

Minister Morton said the Deregulation Agenda will be extended for an additional two years to build on the $21 billion of reforms delivered to date.

“For too long, businesses have had to navigate inefficient administrative and compliance requirements,” Minister Morton said.

“Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our economy and we’re determined to make big improvements to their operations.

“We’ve consulted widely with industry leaders and business owners across Australia to better understand the unnecessary layers that burden Australia businesses.

“We want to give Australian businesses the best environment possible so they can operate with ease, invest and grow with certainty.”

Deregulation Agenda Measures:

• Significant deregulation benefits to fuel and alcohol producers, importers, and distributors through streamlining the administration of fuel and alcohol excise and excise-equivalent customs goods. From 1 July 2023, the changes will:
  • Enable fuel and alcohol businesses with an annual turnover of less than $50 million to lodge and pay excise and excise-equivalent customs duty on a quarterly basis, rather than weekly or monthly as at present.
  • Enable businesses that import fuel and alcohol products for further manufacture or distribution, and want to defer payment of excise or excise-equivalent customs duty, to transfer the fuel or alcohol straight into a warehouse administered by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) once the products have gone through Australian Border Force (ABF) customs clearance. The ABF will still collect tax on direct imports.
  • Streamline and align licensing requirements across the excise system, by:
    • Removing all renewal requirements for excise and excise-equivalent customs goods licences; removing licence fees; enabling the ATO and ABF to issue entity-level licences in addition to site-level licences; and providing blanket permission to move goods between sites controlled by licensed businesses.
    • Removing onshore producers of crude oil and condensate from the excise system until and unless they exceed the relevant production threshold to be liable for excise payments.
    • Extending the time limit to apply for a refund of excise overpayments from 12 months to 4 years after payment, to align with refunds of customs duty.
    • Creating a public register of excise and excise-equivalent customs goods licences administered by the ATO.
  • Amend the excise and excise-equivalent customs duty regime for fuel by:
    • Introducing a refund provision, similar to that in the excise law, for excise-equivalent customs duty on petroleum-based oils used in the further manufacture of petroleum lubricants, ending double taxation of these oils.
    • Removing the requirement to pay and then claim Fuel Tax Credits in respect of excise or excise-equivalent customs duty on fuels used in domestic commercial shipping (‘bunker fuels’), aligning their treatment with the duty-free treatment of bunker fuels for international voyages.
    • Setting a single rate for businesses to calculate and claim Vapour Recovery Unit refunds.
  • Amend the excise law to provide a targeted exemption from excise licensing requirements, up to a threshold of 10,000 litres per year, for licensed hospitality venues to fill beer from kegs into sealed, non-pressurised containers of no more than 2 litres capacity and not designed for medium- to long-term storage (‘growlers’).
• Progress a national approach to modernise the execution of common legal documents.
• Streamline fees associated with Australia’s Business Registers, as company registration and lifecycle management moves to the modernised platform (scheduled for September 2023) to:
  • Remove the companies annual late review fee.
  • Reduce the number of fees paid for ad hoc lodgements under current requirements.
  • Remove fees for searches conducted on the new registry website.
• From 1 July 2022, make permanent the temporary tariff concession that is currently in place for certain medical and hygiene products to treat, diagnose or prevent the spread of COVID-19.
• Reduce regulatory burden for industry in the environmental assessment process through the national rollout of the Digital Environmental Assessments Program, supported by a National Biodiversity Data Repository.
• Simplify the compliance and assurance activities for the Emissions Reduction Fund and the Renewable Energy Target to reduce manual compliance reporting.
• Develop a new Australian Bureau of Statistics reporting application to enable businesses to submit surveys on business indicators directly through their accounting software.
• Enhance the digital capability of Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator and titles administrator.
• Reduce the regulatory burden for business arising from compliance with mandatory safety and information standards under Australian Consumer Law.