EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
STATUTORY RULES NO. 245
DEPARTURE TAX COLLECTION REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT)
(Issued by the authority of the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs)
Section 15 of the Departure Tax Collection Act 1978 (the Act) empowers the Governor-General to make Regulations, inter alia, for the purposes of prescribing matters permitted by the Act to be prescribed or necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to the Act.
Section 5 of the Act provides that departure tax is not payable in respect of the departure from Australia of various persons including those who have been prescribed for the purposes of that section. Regulation 11 of the Departure Tax Collection Regulations (the Regulations) lists persons who are prescribed persons for the purposes of section 5 of the Act.
These Regulations overcome certain anomalies and inequities which had become apparent in the operation of departure tax arrangements by (i) removing the tax exemption now enjoyed by passengers who depart Australia other than by aircraft; (ii) not imposing the tax on transit passengers who depart Australia not later than the day after their arrival or who are prevented from doing so by circumstances outside their control, and (iii) imposing the tax only once in respect of passengers whose travel plans necessitate multiple departures from Australia in the course of a journey.
Regulation 1(a) omits paragraph 11(1) of the Regulations.
Before its omission paragraph 11(1) of the Regulations included, among those persons prescribed for the purposes of section 5 of the Act, passengers on a vessel (not being an aircraft) who satisfied certain conditions. There was no similar exemption for a passenger on an aircraft. Regulation 1(a) removed this anomaly.
Paragraph 5(1)(d) of the Act provides that departure tax is not payable in respect of the departure from Australia of a person who has arrived in Australia but is not, for the purposes of the Migration Act 1958, deemed by sub-section 5(2) of the Migration Act 1958 to have entered
Australia. Thus, persons arriving in Australia by aircraft or ship are not liable to departure tax if they do not disembark from the aircraft or ship in Australia, or in the case of a proclaimed airport, if they do not leave the airport.
Regulation 1(a) substitutes a new paragraph 11(1)(i) which exempts persons from departure tax when they depart from Australia not later than the day after their arrival. This provision removed the liability of genuine transit passengers to pay the departure tax where they left the airport before their departure from Australia.
Regulation 1(a) also substitutes a new paragraph 11(1)(ii) which exempts from departure tax a person who intended to depart from Australia not later than the day following his arrival but who was prevented from so doing by reason of circumstances beyond his control providing he leaves Australia as soon as it is reasonably practicable to do so after those circumstances have ceased to exist.
Regulation 1(a) also substituted a new paragraph 11(m) which exempts from departure tax a person who is undertaking a prescribed voyage and who, on a previous departure by him from Australia in the course of that voyage, was required to pay the tax in respect of that previous departure.
Regulation 1(b) adds a new sub-regulation to regulation 11 to define a “prescribed voyage” in new regulation 11(1).
Regulation 2 provides for the abovementioned amendments to operate on 1 November 1983.