Release of Tax Expenditures and Insights Statement

Today I release a revamped Tax Expenditures and Insights Statement with new information on concessions, credits, deductions and other features of Australia’s tax system.

The statement offers a more detailed picture of how features of our tax system are used by and affect individuals, businesses and other entities, as well as the pressures they place on the budget.

The Tax Expenditures and Insights Statement is a requirement under the Charter of Budget Honesty - it’s not a statement of policy or intent.

The information and analysis presented is intended to increase understanding about the impacts of various elements of the tax system. It reflects policy decisions up to and including the 2022‑23 October Budget.

Greater transparency will help increase public awareness and inform debate about the fairness and efficiency of the tax system.

The statement shows superannuation tax breaks are worth about $50 billion a year.

It also shows the 10 biggest tax expenditures are worth more than $150 billion annually – around a third of the top ten is made up of superannuation tax discounts.

The majority of these super tax breaks go to high income earners. For instance, over 55 per cent of the benefit of superannuation tax breaks on earnings flow to the top 20 per cent of income earners, with 39 per cent going to the top 10 per cent of income earners.

The overhauled statement has been expanded to include distributional analysis of large tax expenditures as well as other key elements of the tax system.

This allows a comparison of how different groups are affected by these elements of the tax system based on their income, gender and age for individuals, and industry for businesses.

Since coming to office, the Albanese Government has been up‑front and consistent about the challenges facing the economy and the budget.

As well as the cost of servicing a trillion dollars of debt, Australia also faces fast rising expenditure in areas such as health, the NDIS, aged care and defence.

We have begun the hard yards of repairing the nation’s finances.

In the October Budget, we demonstrated this through a combination of spending restraint, savings, and tax reform.

We will maintain this responsible and sensible approach to improving the nation’s finances in the May Budget and beyond, in the interests of all Australians, the budget and the economy.