Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Treasury and Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Macdonald. There are a number of aspects to the question, but in response to that specific part of the question, the current penalties are confined to just the taxpayer for minimising their taxes and not keeping proper records. The current law does not explicitly penalise any part of the supply chain for the possession or use of this software. The new offences target each stage of the software supply chain—that is, the manufacture and production, supply and use of electronic sales suppression tools—and they do impose severe penalties.

To answer the second part of your question in relation to why it wasn't been banned, it is a relatively new phenomenon. Obviously the government is acting through this task force and through the response to the task force. It's worth highlighting that it is part of a pretty significant overall response, and this is one very, very important part that we are debating today. The government's response to the Black Economy Taskforce's final report provides the first ever whole-of-government blueprint for tackling black economy activities.

In addition to what we're debating here, it will expand the taxable payments reporting system to security providers and investigative services, road freight transport and computer system design and related services starting on 1 July 2019. It will introduce an illicit tobacco package target to target the three main sources of illicit tobacco: smuggling, warehouse leakage and domestic production. It will modernise business registers and consult on reforms to the Australian business number system. It will introduce an economy-wide cash payment limit of $10,000 for payments made to businesses for goods and services from 1 July 2019. It will remove tax deductibility of non-compliant payments from 1 July 2019. This will mean businesses will no longer be able to claim a tax deduction for employee wages where the business has failed to withhold. It will increase the integrity of the Commonwealth procurement processes by requiring all businesses tendering for Commonwealth government contracts over $4 million to provide a statement—