Question On Notice No. 2618 asked in the Legislative Council on 29 October 2019 by Hon Tjorn Sibma
Question Directed to the: Minister for Environment representing the Treasurer
Parliament: 40 Session: 1
Question
(1) Of those companies who paid the lowest payroll tax threshold, $850,000 - $7.5 million, throughout the recently completed 2018-19 financial year, I seek for the following bands within this threshold:
(a) $850,000 - $1.0 million;
(b) $1,000,001 - $2.0 million;
(c) $2,000,001 - $3.0 million;
(d) $3,000,001 - $4.0 million;
(e) $4,000,001 - $5.0 million;
(f) $5,000,001 - $6.0 million;
(g) $6,000,001 - $7.0 million; and
(h) $7,000,001 - $7.5 million?
(2) Will the Treasurer please provide information pertaining to:
(a) the estimated number of companies within these bands;
(b) the industry sector to which these companies belong; and
(c) the total payroll tax revenue received from each industry sector within each band?
Answered on 3 December 2019
The Member has already asked similar questions on 12 March 2019 (relating to the 2018-19 and previous six financial years) and 11 April 2019 (relating to the 2018-19 financial year) which were answered in full, but required considerable departmental resources to do so.
The McGowan Government announced on 31 October 2019 that it would progressively raise the payroll tax threshold to $1 million by 1 January 2021. This will result in about 1000 businesses in Western Australia, which fall in the band cited in 1(a), no longer being liable for any payroll tax. The cost of this reform over the forward estimates is about $170 million, or about $50 million per annum once fully implemented.
Further specific information requested by the Member would take an unreasonable amount of time and resources to collate and process a response, and would be similar to that already provided in response to previous questions. This would not be an effective use of the department’s resources.