Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content

Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation

Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation

Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 21/2003 by John Wilkinson
  • Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation was originally devised as a principle for distributing federal government grants to the states and territories, but has now become the basis for apportioning GST revenue (pp.1-8)
  • There has been considerable agitation, on the part of New South Wales and Victoria, for Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation to be abandoned, and replaced by a per capita approach for distributing GST revenue (p.47)
  • GST revenue forms a significant part of state and territory budgets (pp.20-25)
  • Different states, and territories, levy significantly varying rates of tax within their own boundaries (pp.14-16, 25-50)
  • States’ and Territories’ need for GST revenue depends, to a varying degree, on the state of production within their own jurisdictions (pp.12-20)