Published 2:12 AM, 16 Jan 2013 Last update 7:20 AM, 16 Jan 2013
The Gillard government has produced advice from its bureaucracy arguing it would be illegal to tell Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Penny Wong how much revenue the minerals resource rent tax (MRRT) is raising because it risks illegally identifying the companies paying it, according to The Australian Financial Review.
In a Treasury note, advice from the Australian Government Solicitor argues that disclosing “protected information” of tax collections for the September quarter could results in a two-year prison sentence, the AFR reported.
“The ATO's current view is that disclosure of these data would breach the secrecy provisions of the Taxation Administration Act (TAA) as taxpayer information may be ascertained by the process of deduction. Accordingly these data have not been published in the monthly financial statement in October,” the note said, according to the AFR.
Former treasurer Peter Costello slammed the note, calling it a strategy to hide the failure of the mining tax.
“The confidentiality provisions are there to protect individual taxpayers but it has never been used to prevent the release of aggregate tax collections,” Mr Costello said, according to the AFR.
“This shows an extreme sensitivity on behalf of the government and leads to the conclusion which we all know – their MRRT has been a failure.”
