Lack of parliamentary support for Turnbull’s initiative sees the Australian government bank AU$425 million over the next three years.
The proposed ability for companies to be able to self-assess the effective life of certain intangible depreciating assets has been dropped, allowing the Australian government to keep a hold on AU$425 million in revenue it would have lost had it come into effect.
« Given the lack of parliamentary support the government has decided not to proceed with this measure to provide certainty to business, » the government said in its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) for 2018-19 released on Monday.
The range of assets the change would have applied to included patents, registered designs, copyright, in-house software, spectrum licence, and telecommunications site access rights.
The measure was part of then-newly-installed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s AU$1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda .
MYEFO also revealed a cost of AU$564 million to the government’s revenue that resulted from the delay to the start of the Regional Broadband Scheme .
Due to the legislation establishing that the Regional Broadband Scheme (RBS) charge to subsidise the National Broadband Network’s (NBN) loss-making satellite and fixed-wireless services not being cleared by Parliament before the summer break, the government will see its receipts drop by AU$564 million this financial year.
This drop will be followed by AU$16 million, AU$20 million, and AU$19.7 million expenses in the following years.
The government said the monthly charge to fixed-line broadband customers would now not start until July 1,2019 at the earliest.
Read also: Australia’s 2018 Budget: How the federal government is funding and adopting tech (Free PDF)
The total cost to the budget was pinned at AU$0.1 million over the forward estimates due to the levy being passed onto NBN.
« This difference occurs because the charge would apply from 2019-20 but payments to NBN Co would not begin until 2020-21, » MYEFO said.
The papers also flagged an August amendment to the government’s AU$20 billion loan to NBN, first announced in November 2016.
