Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 21/2003 by John Wilkinson
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- Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation was originally devised as a
principle for distributing federal government grants to the states and
territories, but has now become the basis for apportioning GST revenue (pp.1-8)
- There has been considerable agitation, on the part of New South
Wales and Victoria, for Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation to be abandoned, and
replaced by a per capita approach for distributing GST revenue (p.47)
- GST revenue forms a significant part of state and territory
budgets (pp.20-25)
- Different states, and territories, levy significantly varying
rates of tax within their own boundaries (pp.14-16, 25-50)
- States’ and Territories’ need for GST revenue
depends, to a varying degree, on the state of production within their own
jurisdictions (pp.12-20)