At a recent speech, shadow minister for Innovation and Technology Clare O’Neil has made some high-level comments with respect to the R&D Tax Incentive and Australia’s innovation policy. Key points from the speech included the following: Australia’s national spending on R&D is about 1.8% of GDP. World-leading countries are spending more than 4%, and the OECD average today is well above Australia’s at about 2.4%; 2016-17 was the first year R&D spending in Australia actually went backwards; Labor noted […]
The AFR has reported that the NSW Government is to form a new advisory council, chaired by David Gonski with a brief to make NSW “the R&D leader within Australia and a world-class contributor”. Forming of the NSW R&D council has also come among calls from the Business Council of Australia for more to be done nationally. The AFR article highlights that Australia has fallen to 22nd in the latest Global Innovation Index, which measures a country’s inventiveness from research and […]
The Age has reported the results of a recent EY census of Fintech companies, which has found consensus among respondents who consider that having access to strong R&D tax programs increased the likelihood of keeping their business onshore rather than moving overseas. The census paper noted that: “Generous R&D tax incentive programs are available overseas and for Australia’s nearest neighbors Indonesia, Hong Kong and New Zealand, are seeing increased funding from governments with popular support from industry,” “Australia must be competitive […]
Within its recently released annual report, Real Energy Corporation Limited (ASX: RLE) has provided an update on the status of the company’s dispute with AusIndustry/ISA over the eligibility of its R&D activities. The company had previously received an adverse finding for the company’s R&D Tax Registrations during the FY14, FY15 and FY16 periods, with corresponding tax offsets in dispute totaling around $7.2M. RLE had appealed the adverse findings to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) as was previously reported to the market […]