Resource rent taxes: the politics of legislation

This paper concerns the Australian Government's call for a resource rent tax for iron ore and coal; and extension of the existing rent tax for petroleum. Our main objective has been to address the Australian Government's conduct of the tax reform consultation process for its proposed resource rent tax legislation. To ascertain the Government's effectiveness in the consultative process toward legislative design, our focus is on the contentious issue of the method for valuation of starting-base assets (or capital assets) because of their deductibility from revenue subject to tax.