Output 4 - Administration of Customs duty and indirect taxes, other border-related revenue collections, and import/export statistics
Passengers
Passenger and crew duty free concessions
A new arrangement for passenger and crew duty free concessions was implemented on1 February 2005. An interdepartmental committee review considered increases to passenger concessions as a balance between tourism, facilitation, industry and revenue interests. The new concessions provide higher limits for duty and tax-free goods for travellers. Travellers who import goods in excess of the limits lose the entitlement to concessions.
Implementation occurred soon after the Commonwealth and State Governments endorsed the changes as both travellers and duty free operators showed strong interest for early implementation.
The agreement to introduce new concession limits recognises there had been little change to duty limits since 1987. Prior to implementation, Customs wrote to representatives of leading tourism industry bodies explaining the changes in detail. Some two million leaflets were published and made available at international airports to outgoing passengers from 15 December 2004. National newspapers also featured articles about the new concessions, some including detailed articles in their travel sections as well as more general reporting in December and January.
The changes brought about a sharp rise in the number of passenger complaints from travellers who had exceeded limits and were then required to pay duty and tax. This is expected to diminish as traveller awareness increases. The rate of complaints reduced gradually after implementation.
Details of the concessions limits are on the Customs Internet site.
Passenger Movement Charge
The Passenger Movement Charge is administered by Customs under the Passenger Movement Charge Collection Act 1995. At its inception it was intended as a notional cost recovery measure to recoup the costs of Customs, DIMIA and AQIS processing of inward and outward passengers at Australia’s borders and the cost of issuing short-term visitor visas. Monies are paid directly to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Passenger Movement Charge collections amounted to $363.8m for 2004–05.
Figure 39: Costs incurred in 2004–05 by agencies providing passenger processing service
| Customs | DIMIA |
AQIS |
|---|---|---|
$177.458m |
* |
$71.999m |
* Full costs for DIMIA were not available at the time of publication. The figure for 2003-04 was $68.876m.
The Tourist Refund Scheme
The Tourist Refund Scheme allows Australian and overseas visitors a refund of GST and WET paid on goods bought in Australia which are subsequently exported by visitors.
Since the scheme began in July 2000, 1.73 million claims have been made, resulting in $212m of GST and WET being refunded. This equates to over $2.3b worth of tourist retail sales in Australia.
Figure 40: Summary of Tourist Refund Scheme claims
2002–03 |
2003–04 |
2004–05 |
|
|---|---|---|---|
Number of claims made |
359 694 |
389 266 |
433 214 |
Percentage of claims approved for payment |
97.4% |
96.6% |
96.5% |
Amount of GST/WET refunded |
$45.3m |
$46.9m |
$49.8m |
Mail back claims processed within 30 days* (to 4 October 2002) |
99%# |
# |
# |
Credit card and Australian bank account refunds processed within five business days (from 18 Nov 2002) |
84.4% |
99.0% |
99.4% |
Cheque refunds posted within 15 business days (from 18 Nov 2002) |
98.7% |
97.6% |
98.4% |
Australian retailer participation |
20 500 |
18 300 |
19 230 |
Number of complaints received and processed |
294 |
149 |
202 |
* Due to the business changes delivered with the new Tourist Refund Scheme IT system in Nov 2002, the mailback process was replaced with full electronic processing for all refunds.
# As a result of the transition to the new Tourist Refund Scheme IT system, a backlog of claims for the period 4 October 2002 to 17 November 2003 were processed retrospectively in the new system. The majority of claims within this period did not meet the 30-day service standard.