CORPORATIONS (FEES) REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT) 1994 NO. 199

CORPORATIONS (FEES) REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT) 1994 NO. 199

Statutory Rules 1994 No. 199

Issued by the Authority of the Attorney-General

Corporations Act 1989

Corporations (Fees) Regulations (Amendment)

Section 22 of the Corporations Act 1989 (the Act) empowers the Governor-General to make regulations not inconsistent with the Act or the Corporations Law of the Capital Territory (the Law) prescribing matters required or permitted by the Law to be prescribed by regulations or necessary or convenient to be prescribed by such regulations for carrying out or giving effect to the Law.

2. Section 25 of the Act provides that the regulations may prescribe fees (including fees that are taxes) for chargeable matters. Chargeable matters are defined in section 9 of the Law as

(a)       the lodgment, registration or submission for examination of documents under the Law;

(b)       the inspection or search of registers kept by, or documents in the custody of, the Australian Securities Commission (the Commission), the production by the Commission under a subpoena of such registers or documents, and the issuing of documents or copies of documents by the Commission; and

(c)       the making of inquiries of or applications to the Minister or the Commission in relation to a matter arising under the Law and the granting of licences, consents or approvals, or the doing of any other act under the Law, by the Minister or the Commission.

3. Subsection 26(2) of the Act provides that where a fee is prescribed as a stated amount that amount is not to exceed $5,000 while subsection 26(3) of the Act provides that two or more fees may be prescribed for the same chargeable matter.

4. Subsection 1352(1) of the Law adds the further provision that the upper limit on the aggregate amount of fees payable for a chargeable matter is $25,000.

5. The principal purpose of the Regulations is to amend the Corporations (Fees) Regulations by substituting a new Schedule of fees for the Schedule that came into operation on 1 August 1992 and was revised on 1 October 1993. In general terms, the new Schedule:

(a)       groups together like or related items;

(b)       reduces, where possible, the number of different fees for similar matters; and

(c)       rationalises levels of fees by substituting one level of fees for two or more levels of fees.

6. The rationalisation of the levels of fees in the new Schedule means that some fees have increased while others have decreased.

7. Details of the accompanying Regulations are as follows.

Regulation 1 : Commencement

8. This regulation sets 1 July 1994 as the commencement date for these amending Regulations.

Regulation 2 : Amendment

9. This regulation provides that the Regulations amend the Corporations (Fees) Regulations.

Regulation 3 : Regulation 3 (Prescribed fees)

10. This regulation inserts a new regulation 3. The amendment, which is of a technical nature, corrects the reference to the Act that is contained in the regulation.

Regulation 4 : Schedule (Prescribed fees)

11. This regulation amends the Corporations (Fees) Regulations by inserting a new Schedule of fees that are prescribed for the purposes of the Act.

12. The new Schedule provides for 16 different levels of fees (compared with 40 in the former Schedule), as shown in the following table:

Note: An amount followed by a bullet point ( • ) indicates that some or all of the items currently attracting that fee will be either increased or reduced to another level of fee. Further details are set out below.

13. In setting these levels of fees and grouping the existing fees into the new levels, the opportunity has also been taken to provide a catch-up in respect of earlier periods in which fees either were not increased by the full amount of the change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or were distorted by the rounding formula. This has been achieved by notionally increasing the base levels of corporations fees in line with the change in the CPI since 1982, when the base levels were established, and grouping the fees into their new levels on the basis of the notional increase. (The change in the CPI between the March quarter of 1982 and the December quarter of 1993 was 99%.)

14. Fees for occupational licensing, fundraising, takeovers and certain applications, which have been increased in the past at a rate faster than the increase in the CPI (in order to reduce the gap between the fees and the cost of processing the documents or applications), have been included in the level of fees nearest their existing level.

15. Fees for a number of matters have not been grouped in the manner shown in the table. Instead, they have been either increased or reduced to a different level of fees. Details of these fees are set out below.

(a)       Fees for lodgment of company annual returns have been simplified by reducing the number of levels of fees from six ($30, $41, $152, $305, $610 and $1220) to three ($30, $175 and $750). The fee for a foreign company return has been brought into line with the fee for a public company return.

(b)       Fees for certain occupational licensing applications and documents have been revised to either eliminate anomalies or reduce the gap between the existing fees and the cost of processing such applications and documents.

(c)       Fees payable upon the late lodgment of documents have been significantly increased (from $20 to $50 for up to one month late; from $81 to $200 for more than one month late) in a move aimed at ensuring more timely lodgment of documents. As an incentive for companies and their professional advisers to revise work practices to ensure more timely lodgment of annual returns (in particular) in 1994/95 and subsequent years, no late fees will be charged in 1994/95 only on annual returns that are no more than one month late.