The Assistant Treasurer: The Hon Kelly O’Dwyer, together with the Minister for Resources (and the former Asst Treasurer): The Hon. Josh Frydenberg, issued a joint press release that said the following.
The recently released results for the first year of the Government’s $100 million Exploration Development Incentive (EDI) highlight its broad use in new exploration.
The EDI permits small mineral exploration companies with no taxable income to provide exploration credits to their Australian resident shareholders for greenfields mineral exploration.
In the EDI’s first year of operation, 84 applications for credits were made as a result of $70 million of greenfields expenditure. As a result of the EDI, exploration companies will be able to issue more than $21 million in credits to their shareholders. This amounts to nearly 85 per cent of the possible annual allocation.
Further information on the EDI is available on the Australian Taxation Office website.
[Assistant Treasurer’s 12 Feb 2016 press release] [LTN 29, 15/2/16]