The Australia’s Future Tax System Review Panel invites submissions from the public as part of the broad strategy for consulting with the Australian community.
The call for submissions follows the recent release of Treasury’s Architecture of Australia’s tax and transfer system paper and the Pension Review background paper.
The Review Panel wants to ensure views and ideas from a wide cross-section of the community are considered and urges interested Australians to take advantage of the opportunity to participate.
The closing date for submissions is Friday 17 October 2008.
Once submissions have been received, the panel will consider requests and may initiate meetings with major representative organisations for further discussions on tax policy review priorities.
Submissions and these initial discussions will inform a consultation paper that will be prepared and released by the panel before the end of 2008.
The consultation paper will outline the key issues to have emerged and provide a basis for the further review processes conducted by the panel during 2009 including providing a further opportunity for submissions, public meetings and direct consultations on issues and options.
The Review Panel will also consider commissioning other papers or studies during 2009.
To assist people in making their initial submissions the following framing questions may be useful.
- What major challenges facing Australia need to be addressed through the tax-transfer system?
- What features should the system have in order to respond to these challenges?
- What are the problems with the current system?
- What reforms do we need to address these problems?
People may also wish to take into account the Review’s terms of reference in preparing their submissions.
The final review report will be delivered to the Treasurer at the end of 2009.
Pension review
As part of the Review, panel member Dr Jeff Harmer is investigating measures to strengthen the financial security of seniors, carers and people with a disability. This part of the Review has its own timetable and consultation arrangements. The pension review will report to Government by the end of February 2009.