The Coalition has announced that it would, if elected, introduce an Exploration Development Incentive that will allow investors to deduct the expense of mining exploration against their taxable income.
- Under the scheme, the ATO would determine a proportion of expenses that can be claimed as tax credits by investors.
- Under the proposed scheme, a tax credit would be provided to Australian resident shareholders for eligible “green fields” exploration expenditure incurred in Australia.
- The scheme would target small exploration companies by limiting eligibility to companies with no taxable income.
- The scheme would start for investments made from 1 July 2014 and would be capped at id=”mce_marker”00m over the forward estimates.
The Coalition also announced that, within the first week of a Coalition Government, the Minister for Resources and Energy would commence work on an Energy White Paper, to be publicly released within a year. The Coalition said that, within its first month in government, the Minister would meet with the major resources companies “to verify a legitimate need to retain their leases, over oil or gas fields, to secure supply for long-lived LNG production projects”.
Source: Coalition’s Policy for Resources and Energy, September 2013
[LTN 171, 4/9/13]