The Government has introduced a package of 3 Bills into Parliament to enable AUSTRAC to recover the costs of its supervisory activities from the businesses it regulates and to require reporting entities to enrol with AUSTRAC. The 3 Bills are:

•Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy Bill 2011
•Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy (Collection) Bill 2011
•Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre Supervisory Cost Recovery Levy (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011.

AUSTRAC has released a final Cost Recovery Impact Statement (CRIS) for the period 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012. The AUSTRAC supervisory levy is proposed to be made up of three components: the base component, large entity component; and transaction reporting component. The base component is currently estimated to be $284 in the first year of the levy.

The minimum large entity component for entitles with earnings more than $100 million will be $14,000. It will increase in bands up to $5 billion (when the fee will be $425,000). For authorised deposit taking institutions, banks, building societies and credit unions, the applicable earnings measure is profit before income tax expense, depreciation and amortisation. For all other entities, the applicable earnings measure is earnings before income tax expense, net financing costs, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).

The volume element of the transaction reporting component is proposed to be set at 1 cent per transaction. There will also be a value component of 0.0005066 per cent.