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Submission to the R&D Tax Incentive Review Report (PDF, 127 KB, 28 October 2016)

The focus of the Science Party's submission to this report was to argue against providing tax incentives for employers to hire PhD graduates in particular.

We recommended that tax incentives should not be applied based on the formal qualifications of the person being hired, as this would create perverse incentives that will push people to do unnecessary study and make the labour market inefficient. We suggested that these individuals can be better supported by proper funding of research institutions, national competitive grant schemes and the R&D tax incentives themselves.

We also recommended simplification and greater clarification of the R&D Tax Incentive scheme.

The closing date for submissions was in October 2016 and in September 2017 we are yet to hear anything further from the review.