CPA Australia has urged the Federal Government to publish the Board of Taxation’s Red Tape Reduction Review and establish clear commitments to lower the expense and administrative burden of the national tax framework.
A report was submitted to the government in June this year following consultations with more than 100 industry stakeholders and the receipt of 52 formal submissions.
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However, the review’s conclusions and recommendations have not yet been made publicly available.
According to estimates by CPA Australia, meeting tax compliance obligations costs Australian taxpayers approximately A$60bn annually, representing roughly 2% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Small and medium-sized enterprises account for roughly A$31bn of these annual costs.
CPA Australia Tax lead Jenny Wong said: “Tax compliance is costing Australia around A$60bn a year. That is not a tax bill. It is the cost of navigating the system.
“Every hour a business spends filling in forms or repeatedly reporting the same information is an hour not spent serving customers, creating jobs and lifting productivity.
“Tax red tape has become a hidden tax on productivity, and small and medium businesses are paying the highest price.”
Wong noted that fulfilling the government’s stated objective to achieve “substantial, material and measurable” reductions in administrative red tape will depend on greater transparency and accountability.
The professional accounting body also called on the government to define a target to decrease overall tax compliance expenditure by 10%, which equates to an annual reduction of around A$6bn by 2030.
Furthermore, the organisation is urging the government to introduce cost-effective measures in the upcoming Federal Budget, prioritising changes to fringe benefits tax and the removal of duplicate filing requirements.
