TaxRambling.com

I went looking for a Bill on the aph.gov.au website. And it was not there. And after a bit of looking around I discovered something weird was happening.

In March, the Prime Minister wrote to the Governor-General to ask him to prorogue Parliament on Friday 15 April and summon Parliament to sit again on Monday 18 April 2016. He did this so they had to discuss the ABCC legislation and not exciting tax and super Bills.

Proroguing a Parliament essentially terminates the current session of Parliament and with it all the current Bills working their way through the Parliament are ended. That means they need to be reintroduced and start the process again.

So this means the innovation tax changes in the Tax Laws Amendment (Tax Incentives for Innovation) Bill 2016, the GST changes (including the “Netflix” tax) in the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2016 Measures No 1) Bill 2016 and the Commissioner’s discretion in Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2016 Measures No 2) Bill 2016 are all dead.

Given the next sitting day is 3 May and the Prime Minister has announced he will call an election on 11 May it is unlikely any of these Bills will get through Parliament before the election (which would see them die again).

So easy of these changes may not see the light of day for some time to come…