Labor Scrubs Plan to Raise R&D Tax Break. (October 7, 2004)

    Sophie Morris in today's Australian Financial Review reports that Labor's avowed intention to return the tax concession for business research and development investment to 150% has been shelved. The ALP places the blame for the about face on Treasury which provided insufficient data thereby negating accurate costings of the proposal.

The AFR reports Senator Kim Carr, Labor's Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science & Research, saying that the return to a 150% tax concession could mean a cost to the government so that "we could be looking at up to $1.2 billion over three years, but it is contested and we simply could not afford... any question about our budget pledges." The Senator also said that even bringing the concession to 140% might not bring the cost down sufficiently but promised that were Labor elected the matter would be reconsidered.