This week, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) hosted its annual Innovation Summit involving presentations and discussions by technology sector and industry leaders. The importance of stability in innovation policy (and in particular, the R&D Tax Incentive) was a largely uniform view among those participating in the summit. Key notes from the presentations include the following: A representative from CSL noted that the timeline for commercialising drugs required thinking in 10-15 year cycles, and that frequent changes to innovation policy made […]
An article published in today’s SMH has indicated that the government’s proposed reforms to the R&D Tax Incentive may be back on the agenda. The bill to enact these reforms, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Sure Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share of Tax in Australia and Other Measures) Bill 2018, did not pass through the Senate, and a Senate Economics Legislation Committee recommended that the bill should be deferred from consideration until further analysis of the bill’s impact is undertaken, […]
The former (and likely to be ongoing) Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews has been interviewed in today’s Australian Financial Review (21 May). This represented the Morrison government’s first comments on the R&D Tax Incentive since the coalition’s return to government. Ms Andrews made note that the widespread media reports of startup entities being subjected to adverse assessments during compliance reviews of their R&D Claims were not a result of technology companies being specifically targeted, and that “the […]
Over the past six months, the R&D Tax Incentive became a discussion point and the major political parties have differed in their views. Labor sought to position themselves as prioritizing the R&D Tax Incentive over the coalition government, and had made specific policy announcements including: Criticising the programme’s cost reduction in the budget papers, and stating a Labor government would use the R&D Tax Incentive as a means of increasing Business Investment in R&D (BERD); A proposed introduction of a collaboration […]