Tax Forum

The Government has put in place a series of major reforms to build a stronger, fairer and simpler tax system, and the 2011 Tax Forum will help us build on that strong record of tax reform.

The forum was held on Tuesday 4 October and Wednesday 5 October at Parliament House in Canberra. It brought together around 180 representatives of the community, business, unions and government, as well as academics and other tax experts, to discuss priorities and directions for further tax reform.

The forum continued the conversation the Government started with the release of the Australia's Future Tax System Review (tax review) in 2010. It focused on a broad sweep of topics covered in the tax review, and included six sessions: personal tax, transfer payments, business tax, state taxes, environmental and social taxes, and tax system governance.

The input from participants and discussions at the Tax Forum will help identify further reforms to make the most of the opportunities and challenges ahead for Australia, such as the shift in global economic weight from West to East, the ageing of the population and the transition to a clean-energy future.

It will help identify further reforms which build on the Government's priorities of:

• making our economy stronger, by boosting participation and productivity, and providing better incentives to work, save and invest;
• making our tax system fairer, by ensuring concessions are appropriately targeted and tax rules achieve their original policy intent; and
• making our tax system simpler, by removing unnecessary complexity.

Following the Tax Forum, the Government will facilitate a debate on tax reform in the Australian Parliament.