Treasury
The Treasury portfolio, through the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), administers a range of subsidies and personal benefits. These initiatives are not designed specifically for regional or urban areas, but rather to assist people or organisations, wherever they are, that satisfy the eligibility criteria.
Several of these programs deliver other government agencies' outcomes, with the ATO acting as a service delivery agency.
Spatial Accounting
Table 13 illustrates a summary of expenditure by program disaggregated between regional Australia, non-regional and non-specific location for the budget year and forward estimates for the Treasury portfolio.
Table 13 provides a summary of expenditure relating to personal benefits and subsidies paid by the Australian Government through the ATO.
The regional split of funding has been based on the current location of personal benefit and subsidy recipients. The location of the recipients has been determined using the residential or business address as reported to the ATO. It should be noted that in relation to some subsidies, an amount will be shown as non-regional where the address of the claimant is non-regional, even though the activity that gave rise to the claim might have taken place in a regional area. This location/address issue might occur if for instance, a head office lodged a claim on behalf of a company which had offices all across Australia.
Total grant and transfer expenditure of $4.5 billion, or 55 per cent of the amount that could be disaggregated between regional and non-regional, has been identified as being distributed to regional areas in the 2012‑13 financial year. However, due to the location/address issue noted above and the inability to specifically identify some expenditure as regional or non-regional, it is possible that the actual amount differs.
Fuel Tax Credits of $16.6 billion are expected to be paid for activities carried out in regional Australia over the next four years. Low income earners in regional areas are expected to benefit from $1.2 billion being paid into super funds over the next four years through the Low Income Superannuation Contribution scheme.
The ATO will stop paying the Education Tax Refund for 2011‑12 and later years. This will now be a Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs portfolio program.
Further details about the programs discussed above and included in Table 13 are set out in the Treasury Portfolio Budget Statement.
Current Initiatives
Regional Tax Assistance Program
The ATO has in place the Regional Tax Assistance Program which is an initiative committed to improving compliance within Australia's regional communities, and works with small businesses, individuals and intermediaries to build and sustain willing participation in the tax and superannuation systems. The program has around 80 staff based in regional centres around Australia who work to build and maintain strong relationships in their communities.
Working collaboratively with other government agencies, the program has also contributed to Australian Government Mobile Service visits, and created opportunities for taxpayers in regional areas to meet with service providers face-to-face. They also support regional and remote centres to provide ATO products and publications for their local communities.
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