Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann

The latest Australian Government Monthly Financial Statement provides further evidence that Labor’s failed mining tax is damaging the Budget and must go.

It shows that the ATO has refunded another $175 million in previously overpaid Minerals Resource Rent Tax instalments in March 2014.

Since then a further $10.6 million in MRRT pre-payments has been refunded in April 2014.

This comes on top of $52.1 million in MRRT refunds between July 2013 and February 2014.

This brings total mining tax refunds so far to more than $237 million, when the Final Budget Outcome for 2012/13, showed that only $200 million in net revenue had been raised from quarterly MRRT pre-payments.

And the mining tax has cost the ATO alone more than $50 million to administer.

When Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan first announced the MRRT they said it would raise $4 billion in the first year.

Before raising a single dollar Labor spent all the money they thought it would raise and more exposing the Budget to significant structural risk.

This deeply flawed MRRT is literally now costing taxpayers money. Yet Labor wants to keep it.

The mining tax was always a bad tax. It is a complex badly designed tax, which is costly to administer, costly to comply with and doesn’t raise any money.

It is bad for the economy, bad for jobs and investment and it should be scrapped.

Bill Shorten should cut his losses and support our legislation to scrap this bad Swan tax.