Submission to the Treasury: Tax Deductible Gift Recipient Reform Opportunities, July 2017

Begin with what the policy is trying to achieve – what is the goal of DGR concessions?

The goal of the DGR process should be to encourage community involvement, engagement and ownership of issues they are concerned about.  Encouraging civil society to own their issues of concern is not only good public policy, it is very good economic policy.  Governments around the world acknowledge the benefit of community involvement and actively seek to promote philanthropy.  

This submission briefly outlines some of the key issues for Australia’s not-for-profit sector in response to the Treasury Discussion Paper on Tax Deductible Gift Recipient Reform Opportunities.

While CCA believes the current regulations relating to DGR are long overdue for reform, members are concerned that the Treasury Discussion Paper leaves unanswered the fundamental question of what is the policy goal of DGR eligibility processes? This lack of clarity about purpose is reflected in some of the options outlined in the Treasury Discussion Paper that appear to inflate supposed costs to government of ‘foregone revenue’, confuse the established definition of charity and impose unnecessary new red tape in sunset clauses, reviews and audits of activities. CCA supports a number of the options outlined in the paper, but rejects a framing of the discussion that fails to fully acknowledge the benefits of DGR.

CCA welcomes this opportunity to provide comment on the discussion paper and is willing to engage in further discussion about any of the issues raised in this submission.

Read CCA's submission here.