Ken Henry drops some tax reform hints

Car registration bills may soon be a thing of the past.

Stamp duty, on property transfers, is also in the sights of the Henry Committee, which has been reviewing Australia’s tax system.

The Treasury  Secretary, Ken Henry, who chairs that committee, told a business audience in Sydney that even the State governments, which collect these taxes, admit that they are not efficient.

They can be inequitable, too.

Mr Henry said:”…the burden of these taxes actually falls quite heavily on people who are more disenfranchised.”

He admitted, too, that the Federal government might be forced to delay some much needed tax reforms, as it will need extra revenue to offset the stimulatory measures it was forced to apply, after the global economic crisis.

He admitted that while replying to questions, after his speech.

“Some of those tax reform options that might otherwise have been delivered quite quickly perhaps will not be capable of being delivered for quite some time so that’s one very real way in which the global financial crisis and its aftermath has impacted on the Review Board’s thinking,” he said.

“As far as the basic architecture of our tax reform exercise is concerned, and of the recommendations that we will make, there has not been a large impact.”

The committee is due to give its final report to the government in December.

However, Mr Henry said the government might delay public release of the report.