The Senate should pass important amendments to the Fuel Tax Act to protect small trucking businesses from the side effects of fuel tax indexation, the Australian Trucking Association has said in this submission to the  Senate Economics Committee.

The Government has used  tariff proposals to increase the fuel tax rate from 38.143 cents per litre to 38.6 cents per litre. The rate will be indexed in line with inflation on 1 February and 1 August.

Because of the way the Fuel Tax Act is worded, tariff proposals do not increase the industry’s entitlement to fuel tax credits, even though they effectively increase the fuel tax rate.

The submission urges the Senate to support the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No 6) Bill in order to fix these side effects of the tariff proposal. The bill does not ratify or implement the Government’s tariff proposals in legislation.