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Upcoming Abbott Government’s R&D Tax Incentive Policy

Swanson Reed welcomes ‘The Coalition’s Policy to Boost the Competitiveness of Australian Manufacturing’ with its support for a “new approach” to manufacturing and policy improvements to the R&D Tax Incentive.

Tony Abbot and the Coalition has placed a completely different emphasis on the importance of increased commercial R&D in Australia than that of the Labor Government.

In 2014, the Coalition plans to make changes to the R&D Tax Incentive program, including:

• A review of businesses over $20 Billion turnover program exclusion rules;
• An attempt to align the R&D Tax Incentive more closely to the ‘more relaxed’ eligibility criteria of the former R&D Tax Concession; and
• A push for companies to make profits from their patents and other IP, similar to tax incentives in the United Kingdom.

The Coalitions taxation White Paper also aims to give broader consideration to the effectiveness of existing taxation incentives for innovation and industry funded research.

It will develop recommendations for potentially improving the incentive regime for innovation investment.

While the R&D Tax Incentive remains a top priority for the life sciences industry, there is further calling for a tax reform to provide incentives for manufacturing and to encourage long-term investment in home-grown technologies.

To read the policy in full, please click here.