Australia’s Budget in Charts Shows Revenue Key

A new levy on Australia’s five largest banks was expected to raise about AU$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) a year.

Helping boost the government’s pay book over the forward estimates will be the $50 billion increase over the period in annual personal income tax receipts, the $17 billion increase in annual company tax receipts, the $13 billion in cumulative Future Fund earnings, GST annual revenue growing $10 billion and the $4 billion increase in annual superannuation fund taxes.

Despite boosted outlays, the Treasurer promised a $7.4 billion surplus in 2020-21 with no borrowing for recurrent spending, which cover the day-to-day bills from running the government.

The rules for local investors are also to be tweaked to end tax deductions for travel expenses and limit depreciation deductions on items such as dishwashers and ceiling fans for those who have negatively geared properties.

Mr Morrison has not said whether he still intends to return to surplus by 2021, a key pledge he made previous year.

In the 2017 Budget announcement, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced a 0.06% annual levy on key funding sources for Australia’s major banks – a cost that could be passed on to Aussie borrowers and may drive them toward alternate lending sources.

A look at the winners and losers from Australia’s 2017 federal budget handed down by Treasurer Scott Morrison on Tuesday May 9, 2017.

In this year’s budget he cut the deficit levy, so anyone earning more than $180,000 will pay 2 percentage points less tax from June 30.

Another A$1.2 billion will be raised over the next four years by imposing a levy on foreign workers, another issue that has been heavily debated publicly, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promising earlier this year “Australian jobs for Australians”.

Until now, employers have contributed one to two per cent of their payroll to training if they employ foreign workers and these requirements have been hard to police, Morrison said. Australia is adding about 350,000 people a year “that we need to house”, he said. The government also plans to create the Australian Financial Complaints Authority for dispute resolution. Deal with both tasks is to start in the financial year which begins July 1.

Analysts have described it as much closer to the Labor Party values than the Liberal Party’s, however, Mr Morrison also announced a crackdown on dole recipients, with 5000 random drug tests carried out each year at three locations.

“There will also be $31.4 million for capital works to maintain important infrastructure, gaining efficiencies in reduced long-term maintenance costs”, Mr Morrison said.

“These big ticket items include funding for the second Sydney airport, money to build a new inland rail line between Brisbane and Melbourne and additional funds for a range of other urban rail projects across Australia”, the Deloitte report said.

“It is questionable how effective these measures will be in improving the supply of housing”.

As expected, Mr Shorten committed to providing $22 billion more for schools than what the Coalition announced in the budget.