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Australian Labor government has been under fire with allegations that its
mineral resources rent tax (MRRT) is deeply flawed and failed to deliver the
revenue designed to fund superannuation reform and small business tax breaks.
Deputy Prime Minister and Treasure Wayne Swan announced last week that
the MRRT has raised just 126 million Australian dollars (129.8 million U.S.
dollars) in its first six months against a full-year forecast of 2 billion (2.06
billion).
The government has blamed the shortfall on volatile commodity prices
while the Opposition Coalition says the tax is flawed.
Explaining the shortfall in MRRT revenue, Swan said on the day that he
released the MRRT data that no commodity analysts or economists had forecast the
"tumble" that took place in iron ore prices late last year.
The iron ore price reached a three-year low of 85 dollars a tonne on
September 5, 2012, but the Opposition Coalition argued that the price had
recovered to about 110 dollars a tonne by the time the government made its
mid-year budget update in the third week of October last year.
The Opposition said Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Swan
should take the blame for negotiating the 30 percent tax with the three big
mining companies, namely BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata.
"The Coalition has said for some time that Labor's MRRT was a fiscal
train wreck in the making," shadow assistant treasurer Mathias Cormann said in a
statement.
The Australian newspaper reported that Swan and Resources Minister
Martin Ferguson hammered out the terms of the mining resource rent tax with BHP
Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xtrata in 2010.
The deal on the MRRT allowed the companies to value their assets at
their market worth, and depreciate them over the effective mine life. Industry
sources say this is what has eroded the returns from the new tax.
Although Treasury modelled how much companies would claim for
depreciation, it underestimated what the market value was for the major mining
assets and, in the case of several major mining projects, overestimated their
expected mine lives.
The result is that companies have been able to claim much larger
deductions for depreciation than Treasury had allowed for.
Trade Minister Craig Emerson defended the MRRT on Monday, saying the tax
is designed to be flexible and there are no plans to change its form. He also
rejected claims that revenue would not even cover administration costs.
Swan said last Friday it was too soon to be reconsidering the design of
the tax. He said influences on the tax, other than the volatility caused by
commodity prices, would be considered by Treasury and the tax office as they
reviewed the tax's performance.
"We need a resource rent tax for our children and grandchildren, " he
said.
Australian Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt, calling the current laws a
"dud", introduced a bill on Monday to plug the loophole that allows the miners
to deduct from their tax liability all past and future royalty payments to
states.
But a spokesman for the Minerals Council of Australia said the
government must not break the deal it made with minerals giants BHP Billiton,
Rio Tinto and Xstrata in 2010.
He was quoted by Australian Financial Review as saying on Monday that
the tax was being extensively renegotiated through the policy transition group
led by Resources Minister Ferguson and former BHP chairman Don Argus.
He said the tax was not flawed because the deductability provisions won
by the minerals giants were done to eliminate taxation retrospectivity.
MRRT revenue is supposed to pay for a number of initiatives, including
the tax concessions from an increase in the superannuation guarantee from nine
percent to 12 percent, the removal of the 15 percent super contributions tax for
low-income earners and small business tax breaks.
Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten said the government would not drop
expenditure commitments linked to MRRT revenue, despite the shortfall. He said
the measures would be funded from " consolidated revenue".