Tag: The Budget

The Budget Was “Fire, Ready, Aim”!

Finally some of the commentators are seeing though the Government spin to the underlying ideology, and are highlighting the weaknesses and risks in the massive proposed spending. And it’s not so much the quantum, as the direction of fire…

A quick rant on the Australian budget

https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/no-bang-for-buck-budget-is-big-on-political-correctness-weak-on-job-creation-20201015-p565kc.html

We still don’t have proof that cutting company taxes will boost jobs and wages

From The Conversation.

If you read these headlines you might think we finally have proof that cutting company taxes will boost employment and investment:

These stories are based on analysis of the 2015 company tax cut by consultants AlphaBeta. But the study, as well as some of the media coverage of it, show a worrying misunderstanding of how company tax cuts work.

Simply comparing companies that receive a tax cut with those that don’t isn’t the right methodology to conclude that the 2015 tax cuts created more employment or higher wages.

Cutting taxes lets companies keep more of their profits, allowing them to invest in new equipment and premises for example. The company then needs to hire more workers to work with these new assets. The newly created jobs require businesses to compete for workers and this increased demand pushes up wages across the entire economy.

Suppose a retail company gets a tax cut and opens a new store. It advertises for workers, many of whom are already employed by a rival store that didn’t get the tax cut. The first company will need to offer the workers higher wages to entice them away. The rival store will need to consider matching the wages in order to keep the workers.

In other words, even workers in companies that don’t receive the tax cut should see a wage rise.

Going through the AlphaBeta report

In 2015, the federal government cut the tax rate from 30% to 28.5% for businesses with less than A$2 million in revenue. Eligible businesses saved around A$2,940 on average because of the tax cut.

AlphaBeta used transaction data from 70,000 businesses to compare businesses just below the A$2 million threshold to companies that were just above it.

The analysis looked at the differences between the two groups of firms in terms of whether they hired new workers, invested in their businesses, increased worker wages, or kept some of the cash as a reserve.

AlphaBeta chalked any differences between companies that received the tax cut and those that didn’t to the company tax cuts.

As reported in The Australian, AlphaBeta found that companies that received the tax cut increased their employee headcount by 2.6%. The companies that didn’t receive the cut increased employment by just 2.1%.

This difference turned out to be “statistically significant”, meaning it is very unlikely to be the result of random chance.

As the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, AlphaBeta also concluded that 51% of the tax cut was kept as cash, 27% went towards new investment, but only 3% was paid to workers in higher wages.

In other words, wages increased by just A$1.44 per week. This is not only a small amount, it was also found to be not statistically significant.

Problematic methodology

The main issue with this study’s methodology is actually noted by AlphaBeta in the report itself (and echoed in the coverage by the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald).

The problem is that we cannot draw any conclusions about the effect of company tax cuts on jobs or wages by studying a bunch of firms that received them and another bunch that did not, even if the firms are only slightly different.

This is because, as noted above, the effect of company tax cuts on jobs and wages take place in the entire labour market. An increase in demand for labour flows through to all business, and therefore, so do higher wages.

So we should not expect to see wages rising only in those businesses that receive the tax cuts. The finding that an increase in wages is small and insignificant is exactly what we would expect to see from this study.

Another problem is that we do not know whether the characteristics of the companies in AlphaBeta’s sample. Were some industries with particularly pronounced employment or wage increases over represented in one group but not the other, for instance?

Studying the effect of company tax cuts on employment and wages also requires a longer time period – sometimes years – and careful control of other factors affecting jobs and wages in some firms relative to others.

Blind review:

The analysis in this review is generally fair and reaches a sound conclusion regarding the AlphaBeta report. However, the logic behind company tax cut raising wages is somewhat simplified.

A cut in company tax lowers the costs of production and can flow to labour, capital (including equipment and buildings) and consumers. Economics tells us that who actually benefits from a tax cut depends on what is more responsive to the tax – labour, capital or output.

The lower production costs from a company tax cut can lead to greater output and lower prices as consumers buy more goods and services. This depends, of course, on how responsive consumers are to changes in price.

In the short-run labour is more mobile than capital, which is usually regarded as fixed. Therefore, in the short-run most of the benefit is borne by owners of capital (the companies) in the form of higher after-tax profits.

However, over the longer term, companies invest their after-tax profits in the business. So most of the benefit of the tax cut goes to workers though higher wages as the increased “capital stock” (such as equipment) makes labour more productive.

It follows that there is no reason to expect a significant increase in wages over a period of one or two years (as the AlphaBeta report covers). Indeed, such a result would be somewhat surprising. – Phil Lewis

Author: Ross Guest, Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow, Griffith University

Reviewer: Phil Lewis, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

Most of the benefits from the budget tax cuts will help the rich get richer

From The Conversation

In the federal budget, Treasurer Scott Morrison promised tax cuts to all working Australians in the form of an offset and changes to tax income thresholds. But our analysis of Treasury data shows that while the government advertised these as payments to low and middle income Australians, most of the benefits would flow through to high income earners in future years.

If all of the stages of the tax plan passed parliament, there would be a sharp increase in benefits for people earning above A$180,000, due to the reduction of their marginal tax rate from 45% to 32.5%.

Taxes in most countries are progressive. This means that the more you earn, the higher your marginal rate (the additional amount you pay for each dollar earned).

There are good reasons for this – progressive tax systems mean those on a lower income pay a lower average tax rate, while those on higher incomes pay a higher average tax rate. This reduces income inequality – as you earn more, for each dollar you earn, you will pay more in tax than someone on a lower income.

With the 2018-19 budget, the proposal is for a “simpler” tax system from 2024-25. This means a reduced number of tax brackets, and a lower rate of 32.5% to those earning between A$87,001 and A$200,000.

Treasurer Scott Morrison said following the budget:
Well, you’ve still got a progressive tax system. That hasn’t changed. In fact, the percentage of people at the end of this plan, who are on the top marginal tax rate is actually slightly higher than what it is today.

However this new tax system from 2024-25 is less progressive than the current system. It means higher income inequality – the rich get more of the tax cuts than the poor.

As part of the new proposal, low and middle income earners get a tax offset in 2018-19, with high income earners getting very little. This part of the plan is progressive – more money goes to lower income earners.

However, by 2024-25, the tax cuts means high income earners gain A$7,225 per year, while those earning A$50,000 to A$90,000 gain A$540 per year, and those earning A$30,000 gain A$200 per year.

Of course, another factor of tax cuts is that they only benefit those who are employed. Tax cuts don’t benefit people like the unemployed, pensioners, students (usually young people) and those on disability support pensions.

The conversation Australians need to have is how we should be spending the revenue boost we are seeing over the next few years. We can either spend this windfall gain on benefits to high income earners, in the hope that this will flow through spending to everyone else; or maybe we should encourage young people into housing through an increase to the first home owners grant, or increased funding for our schools, universities and health system.

We’ve developed a budget calculator so you can see how your family is affected by the 2018 budget.

Author:Robert Tanton, Professor, University of Canberra; Jinjing Li, Associate Professor, NATSEM, University of Canberra

Morrison’s budget tax plan is another missed opportunity

From The Conversation.

Even though this year’s budget is pretty good politics and reasonable economics, on almost every front, it is a missed opportunity to be bold.

Last year’s budget was a bank-bashing bombshell, with 4-5% of profits for five of Australia’s biggest banks yanked away, not for financial stability reasons, but because, as Treasurer Scott Morrison hinted at the budget press conference, people don’t like the banks very much.

With that populist mission accomplished, this year’s budget is more mundane.

The much-vaunted return to surplus is now planned for 2019-20 at just 0.1% of GDP. In 2017-18 we are told to expect a deficit of 1% of GDP ($18.2 billion). That’s before the forecast 3% real GDP growth from 2018-19 onward kicks in. An heroic assumption.

Compare that to an actual of 2.1% in 2016-17. That topline forecast is not insane, but it is certainly bullish. One is tempted to ask the Treasurer whether he would bet a year’s salary that real GDP will be above 3% compared to below that. I suspect he wouldn’t.

A new personal income tax plan

Having previously introduced, but not wholly managed to get through the Senate, a 10-year plan to reduce the company tax rate from 30% to 25%, this year the government has a seven-year “Personal Income Tax Plan”.

Under the “PIT plan” (pun absolutely intended) the number of tax brackets will be reduced from five to four. By 2024-25 the tax-free threshold will remain at $18,200 and a 19% tax rate will apply up to income of $41,000, at which point the 32.5% rate will kick in. The top marginal rate of 45% will apply to incomes above $200,000.

One good thing the plan does address (at least in part) is “bracket creep,” where wage growth coupled with fixed tax thresholds, leads taxpayers to pay more. Under the new plan, 94% of Australians will pay no more than a 32.5% marginal tax rate. That compares to 63% of Australians who pay that rate or less, under existing policy settings.

In terms of tax relief, it’s relatively modest. A person earning $50,000 will be $530 better off in 2018-19. Because of changes to the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset, this falls to $215 for someone earning $120,000 (and less still beyond that).

Now $530 post-tax dollars, for someone on $50,000 a year, isn’t nothing. But it doesn’t really make up for wage growth so sluggish (2.2% on average last year) that it barely keeps up with inflation.

This is all part of the government’s newly announced, but thoroughly leaked, mantra that taxes should be no more than 23.9% of GDP. The rationale is, as the budget papers put it “so we do not unfairly burden Australians, nor allow taxes to chase ill-disciplined spending”.

In some sense that’s a fair point, but the 23.9% is completely unscientific. It appears to be the average of what tax as a share of GDP was during the Howard government, which has left most economic commentators wondering “so what?”

The black economy and superannuation

There’s a “crackdown” on the black economy with a $10,000 limit on cash transactions. Who knows how that will be enforced. Perhaps our good friends the banks will start complying with anti-money laundering provisions.

In any case, I prefer a $0 limit on cash transactions by transitioning over three years to a cashless Australia. That would likely raise $5-6 billion a year every year, maybe more.

The sneakiest thing of all is taxing tobacco 12 weeks earlier when it leaves the warehouse, rather than at present upon entry into Australia. That will boost tax receipts once, and once only, in 2019-20 by $3.27 billion. Without that timing trick the return to surplus would be pushed back a year to 2020-21.

Having attacked retirement savings last year, the government is now “reuniting Australians with lost super”. Hard to be against that, but hard to get too excited either. Exit fees on superannuation accounts will also be banned, which is a very good idea and should help consolidation of accounts.

One step better would be making it a net zero cost to transfer all banking arrangements (mortgage, accounts, credit cards, etc) from one bank to another, through a mandate on banks and a subsidy for customers. That would help with competition in the banking sector, which has come under recent scrutiny.

Another small but sensible initiative is increasing the Pension Work Bonus from $250 to $300 per fortnight, which permits pensioners to earn up to that amount without affecting their pension eligibility.

On a more disappointing note there is a reasonably large amount of fanfare but very little substance about “backing regional Australia”. There is $200 million for a third round of the Building Better Regions Fund to support infrastructure on top of the $272 million from the Regional Growth Fund.

That’s fine but falls well short of a systematic plan for regional infrastructure and does not address regional unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, in a meaningful way. Tackling that would require the kind of place-based policies like targeted wage subsidies and reduced payroll taxes that I have advocated before.

There are a host of so-called “integrity measures” to do with taxation. There’s the oft-talked about tightening of thin capitalisation rules, whereby companies load worldwide debt onto an Australian entity to increase interest charges in Australia, instead of in low taxing jurisdictions like Ireland. This is in addition to other attempts to get multinationals to pay more tax. These are more likely to get multinationals to pay lawyers more, but it’s now customary padding in every budget.

The forecasts are pretty rosy in this year’s budget, but they always are. Overall, it’s a hard budget to hate, and a hard budget to like. But it is a classic political pre-election budget.

Author: Richard Holden, Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW

When Is a Bank, Not a Bank?

The Treasury has also released draft legislation to enable more entities to be able to use the term “bank”.  The Government announced in the 2017-18 Budget that it will act to reduce regulatory barriers to entry for new and innovative entrants to the banking system, by lifting the prohibition on the use of the word ‘bank’ by authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) with less than $50 million in capital.

In practice this means a wider range of entities can now claim to be a bank, provided they are an ADI. Given the term is widely recognised in the community, it may help to level the playing field a little (though it is probably less important than differential capital rules and other barriers, such as implicit Government guarantees!)

Currently APRA  only permit ADIs with Tier 1 capital exceeding $50 million to use the terms ‘bank’, ‘banker’ and ‘banking’. However, there are a number of smaller ADIs which are prudentially regulated by APRA who would benefit from the use of these terms. The proposed amendment will allow all ADIs to use the terms will create a more level playing field in the banking sector.

The current restriction on the use of the words ‘bank’, ‘banker’ and ‘banking’ under section 66 of the Banking Act will be removed to the effect that where an entity is an ADI, that entity will be able to use those terms in its business. This will allow a range of ADIs to use the term ‘bank’.

APRA will retain its ability to restrict the use of the term ‘bank’ in certain circumstances; for example, where a purchase payment facility is an ADI but does not conduct traditional ‘banking’ business.

It is important that APRA retains the ability to determine that some ADIs may not use the restricted terms. Therefore, APRA will continue to be able to restrict the use of the terms ‘bank’, ‘banker’ and ‘banking’ through providing an affected ADI with a written determination restricting that ADI from use of the terms. [Item 5, subsection 66AA(3) of the Banking Act]

Determinations made by APRA to restrict the use of these terms may apply to a single ADI or to a class or classes of ADI. It is expected that APRA would use the power to prohibit certain ADIs which do not have the ordinary characteristics of banks from utilising the term ‘bank’ (for example, purchase payment facilities). This power may also be used to deny the use of the term where serious or unusual circumstances warrant APRA making this determination.

APRA may still receive applications from non-ADI financial businesses for permission to use the term ‘bank’, or from ADIs who wish to apply for the use of other restricted terms, such as ‘credit union’ (non-mutual ADIs are separately prohibited from inaccurately describing themselves as ‘credit unions’ or like terms). The latter approval is not automatically granted in the same way as ‘bank’ given that these terms convey the concept of mutuality, which is not relevant to all ADIs.

However, given APRA will no longer receive applications from many ADIs, it is no longer desirable that the remainder of the decisions to be made under section 66 be reviewable. This more appropriately reflects the Government’s intent to limit the use of the term ‘bank’ by financial businesses other than ADIs to very rare and unusual circumstances. This approach is consistent with Recommendation 35 of the Financial System
Inquiry to clearly differentiate the investment products financial companies and similar entities offer retail consumers from ADI deposits.

The Customer Owned Banking Association welcomed the move:

COBA congratulates the Government on moving quickly to allow all credit unions and building societies to use the term ‘bank’.

Credit unions and building societies are Authorised Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs), like banks, and are subject to the same prudential regulatory framework as banks and the Government’s deposit guarantee under the Financial Claims Scheme.

“It makes sense that all ADIs should be able to choose to use the term ‘bank’ to explain what they do – which is banking,” said COBA CEO Mark Degotardi.

“The historic restriction on use of the term bank by ADIs with more than $50 million in capital is out of date and no longer relevant.

“We welcome the Government’s move to level the playing field.

“There are already 18 customer owned banks providing competition and choice in the retail banking market. These former credit unions and building societies are likely to be joined by many of the 60 other customer owned banking institutions currently trading as credit unions and building societies.

“Some credit unions and building societies may prefer not to rebrand but at least now they will have a choice.

“This draft legislation is the latest installment of the Government’s agenda to promote competition in banking. COBA congratulates the Government on its commitment to this agenda and its delivery of positive reform.

“We look forward to engaging with the Government on the draft legislation.”

 

APRA Reach Extended To Non-ADI Lenders

The Treasury has released draft legislation for consultation which extends some of APRA’s powers to some non-ADI lenders.  This is an important move, not least because we are seeing signs of non ADI lenders expanding their market footprint as regulators bear down on the larger mainstream players. Smaller non-ADI’s with assets of below $50m appear to be exempt.

The consultation on the draft Bill will close on Monday, 14 August 2017.

It covers the “conduct of a non-ADI lender relating to lending finance including the lending of money, with or without security or any other activities which either directly or indirectly result in the funding or originating of loans or other financing, which has the ability to cause or promote instability in the financial system”.

APRA will be able to apply different regulations to non-banks, a sub-section of these lenders, or to specific lenders. This does not include responsible lending responsibility which fall under ASIC. APRA will need to consult with ASIC when planning intervention (which highlights again the problem of role definition between APRA and ASIC).

Corporations with a stock of debt on their books, and a flow of debt through their books, which does not exceed $50,000,000, will not be registrable corporations for the purposes of the Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Act 2001 (FSCODA).

A new power will be provided to APRA to make rules with respect to lending finance by non-ADI lenders, for the purpose of addressing financial stability risks. APRA will also be provided a power to issue directions to a non-ADI lender, in the case that it has, or is likely to, contravene a rule. Appropriate directions powers and penalties will also be introduced for a non-ADI lender that does, or fails to do, an act that results in the contravention of a direction from APRA.

As a result of these amendments, corporations whose business activities in Australia include the provision of finance, or have been identified as a class of corporations specified in a determination made by APRA, will become registrable corporations for the purposes of FSCODA.

This will widen the class of registrable corporations under the FSCODA and will ensure that all non-ADI lenders, within specified parameters, are captured by these amendments.
Corporations which are not considered to be registrable corporations for the purposes of the FSCODA will include those corporations: whose sum of assets in Australia, consisting of debts due to the corporation resulting from transactions entered into in the course of the provision of finance by the corporation, does not exceed $50,000,000 (or any greater or lesser amount as prescribed by regulations); and whose sum of the values of the principal amounts outstanding on loans or other financing, as entered into in a financial year, does not exceed $50,000,000 (or any other amount as prescribed by regulations).

It is important to note that these powers do not equate to ongoing regulation by APRA of non-ADI lenders. APRA will not prudentially regulate and supervise non-ADI lenders as it does ADIs.

Under the Banking Act 1959 (Banking Act), a body corporate that wishes to carry on ‘banking business’ in Australia may only do so if APRA has granted an authority to the body corporate for the purpose of carrying on that business. Once authorised by APRA, the body corporate is an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) and is subject to APRA’s prudential requirements and ongoing supervision.

There are other entities who, like ADIs, provide finance for various purposes within Australia, but are not considered to be conducting ‘banking business’ as they do not take deposits. Given there are no depositors to protect, these entities are not required to be licensed as ADIs and prudentially regulated by APRA. These non-ADI lenders currently only have to report data to APRA in certain circumstances.

Under current law, APRA has significant powers with which to address the financial stability risks posed by the lending activities of ADIs. For example, concerns in recent years about residential mortgage lending have led APRA to take specific prudential actions to reinforce sound residential mortgage lending practices by ADIs.

APRA currently has no such ability with respect to non-ADI lenders. This gap potentially undermines APRA’s ability to promote financial stability, as lending practices that APRA has curtailed or prohibited for ADIs may continue to be pursued by non-ADI lenders.

To address this gap, APRA will be given new rule making powers which apply to non-ADI lenders. These new powers will allow APRA to make rules relating to the lending activities of non-ADI lenders, where APRA has identified material risks of instability in the Australian financial system.

These powers are narrow when compared to APRA’s powers over ADIs. This is an appropriate outcome, given there are no depositors to protect in non-ADI lenders. When exercising these powers, APRA will have to consider efficiency, competition, contestability and competitive neutrality consistent with section 8 of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority Act 1998 (APRA Act).

A separate but related issue is APRA’s ability to collect data from registrable corporations under Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Act 2001 (FSCODA). The current definition of registrable corporation in section 7 of the FSCODA has limited APRA’s ability to collect data, as corporations which engage in material lending activity are occasionally technically not required to register. This has inhibited the ability of APRA and the Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) to properly monitor the financial stability implications of the non-ADI lender sector.

APRA’s ability to collect data from non-ADI lenders will be improved by an alteration of the definition of registrable corporations in FSCODA. The new definition will seek to capture entities who engage in material lending activity, irrespective of whether it is their primary business.

 

 

 

Property Investors Lose Tax Breaks

The Treasury has released its exposure draft for consultation on the plans announced in the budget to disallow travel expense deductions and limit depreciation for plant and equipment used in relation to residential investment property.

Closing date for submissions: Thursday, 10 August 201.

As part of the 2017-18 Budget, the Government announced it would disallow travel expense deductions relating to residential investment properties and limit depreciation deductions for plant and equipment used in relation to residential investment properties.

Travel deductions

From 1 July 2017, all travel expenditure relating to residential investment properties, including inspecting and maintaining residential investment properties will no longer be deductible.

This change will not prevent investors from engaging third parties such as real estate agents to provide property management services for investment properties. These expenses will remain deductible.

Plant and equipment depreciation deductions

From 1 July 2017, the Government will limit plant and equipment depreciation deductions for investors in residential investment properties to assets not previously used. Plant and equipment items are usually mechanical fixtures or those which can be ‘easily’ removed from a property such as dishwashers and ceiling fans.

Plant and equipment used or installed in residential investment properties as of 9 May 2017 (or acquired under contracts already entered into at 7:30PM (AEST) on 9 May 2017) will continue to give rise to deductions for depreciation until either the investor no longer owns the asset, or the asset reaches the end of its effective life.

The Government has released exposure draft legislation and explanatory material for amendments to give effect to the Budget announcements outlined above.

Public consultation on the exposure draft legislation and explanatory material will run for four weeks, closing on Thursday, 10 August 2017. The purpose of public consultation is to seek stakeholder views on the exposure draft legislation and explanatory material.

How the bank levy could end up hitting brokers

From Mortgage Professional Australia.

As Australia’s government indulges in another round of bank bashing, brokers could get caught in the crossfire, writes MPA editor Sam Richardson

At 10AM the ASX opened and the bank stocks began to plummet. ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac were hit, as well as Macquarie: nearly $14bn was wiped from their share prices in total. This would all have made sense on 10 May, the day after the government unveiled a new 6 basis point bank levy, but the price collapse occurred on 9 May, nine and a half hours before the budget was unveiled.

Evidently someone knew the bank levy was coming, if not the banks themselves.

“This new tax is not a well-thought-out policy response to a public interest issue,” commented Australian = Bankers’ Association CEO Anna Bligh. “It is a political tax grab to cover a budget black hole.”

Although it is equivalent to just 0.06% of a bank’s liabilities, and affects only the big banks and Macquarie, the levy is expected to bring in $6.2bn over four years. The government says the levy will apply from 1 July, although it is less clear when it will end, or how the banks will pay for it.

Raising rates isn’t an option, according to Treasurer Scott Morrison. “Don’t do it,” he told banks the day after the budget. “Don’t confirm their worst impressions. Tell them another story. Tell them you will pony up and help fix the budget.”

Rate rises and competition
Australia’s banks don’t appear to agree. Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev has already warned that “higher costs are either passed on to customers through reduced service levels or higher pricing, or to shareholders through lower returns. There is no middle option to absorb costs.” While not explicitly stating they’ll raise rates, the other banks have made similar points to Narev’s.

Major bank borrowers’ interest rates could rise by 20 basis points, analysts from investment bank Morgan Stanley have predicted.

Martin North, principal of research firm Digital Finance Analytics, made a similar claim when speaking to MPA. “Because the mortgage book is half of the total book you assume there would be a 15–20 basis points hike in mortgage rates, if they put it all through.”

Although the levy will only affect the big five, refinancing your customers with the nonmajors may not be the best option, North warns. “If the big four reprice their mortgages I’m pretty sure the regionals will follow anyway, because they need to do margin repair on their books.”

Adelaide and Bendigo Bank CEO Mike Hurst and others in the non-major sector have welcomed the levy as a way to even the competitive playing field. Deloitte told MPA that concerns about competitors could dissuade the banks from making aggressive rate hikes. However, North says the non-majors still face a “significant competitive disadvantage” because of higher capital requirements.

Foreign-owned banks could be the main beneficiaries of the budget, according to the major banks. ING DIRECT and HSBC have the ability to raise funds from overseas while being exempt from the levy due to their small presence in Australia. Foreign-owned banks start from a low base, however: ING’s share of AFG’s lending was just 3.51% in February, while HSBC only resumed dealing with brokers in June.


“If the big four reprice their mortgages I’m pretty sure the regionals will follow” – Martin North, Digital Finance Analytics

Unscrambling the egg
Standing between major bank borrowers and higher rates is the ACCC. Morrison has tasked the ACCC with forcing the banks to explain future rate changes and ensure they don’t use rate hikes to pass on the levy.

Unfortunately for the Treasurer, explaining rate hikes is “like trying to unscramble an egg”, says DFA boss  North. “I think it would be impossible to identify which elements of funding, or the levy, would be responsible for moving prices up or down. There’s a whole host of reasons why, outside the levy, prices will continue to rise,” he explains. International funding is still expensive; the banks are still hindered by overly cheap loans from last year; APRA is forcing them to reduce interest-only lending, and, finally, capital requirements continue to increase. At the end of the year APRA will publish a paper which North expects to recommend raising rates and consequently rates on mortgages.

Therefore, says North, “we have not seen the end of the mortgage rate hikes”.

“There is no middle option to absorb costs” Ian Narev, Commonwealth Bank

Impact on brokers
The government’s bank bashing could end up hitting brokers.

“This levy comes at a time when bank earnings and profitability are already facing multiple headwinds,” warned credit ratings agency Moody’s, pointing to moderate credit growth, low interest rates and rising capital requirements. Coupled with further scrutiny of vertical integration by the Productivity Commission later this year, the banks have the incentive to take radical action.

Banks could save billions of dollars by cutting broker commissions, according to UBS. The investment bank claims that the cost of brokers is rising and accounted for 23% of the cost base of the major banks’ personal/consumer divisions in 2015.

Analysts Jonathan Mott and Rachel Bentvelzen wrote: “We estimate mortgage broker commissions add 16bp per annum to the cost of every mortgage in Australia, irrespective of whether the mortgage was broker or proprietary originated.”

Following the ASIC and Sedgwick reviews the banks will start to lower commission rates over the next few months, the analysts have predicted. “While mortgage brokers are unlikely to be happy with this outcome, we believe there is little they can do,” they said. Competition between banks would keep interest rates low, however, and “offset the additional repricing expected by the banks as they adopt the new Bank Levy”.

Sedgwick’s review gave the banks until 2020 to enact its recommendations, without explicitly recommending cuts to commissions. The consultation period for responses to ASIC’s review closed in June, making it unclear how banks would radically change commissions in time for the implementation of the levy on 1 July.

Whatever the outcome, the budget has created a $6.2bn reason for Australia’s banks to start making changes.