Assessing Local Government Revenue Raising Capacity

CONTENTS

Preliminaries
Cover, Copyright, Opportunity for further comment, Terms of reference, Contents, Abbreviations and explanations, Glossary, Overview

1   About this study
1.1   What has the Commission been asked to do?
1.2   How has the Commission approached its task?
1.3   Guide to the report

2   Local government in Australia
2.1   An introduction to local government
2.2   Roles and functions of local governments
2.3   Revenue sources of local government

3   Revenue and expenditure across local governments
3.1   Sources of local government data and their limitations
3.2   Revenue raised across local governments
3.3   Composition of own-source revenue
3.4   Expenditure of local governments

4   Defining revenue-raising capacity
4.1   Fiscal capacity
4.2   Willingness to pay
4.3   Comparisons of the relative potential to raise revenue

5   Comparisons of revenue-raising capacity
5.1   Fiscal capacity
5.2   Revenue-raising effort
5.3   Factors affecting revenue raised by local governments
5.4   Analytical results
5.5   The scope to raise additional own-source revenue
5.6   Financial impacts of increased revenue raising
5.7   Policy implications

6   The effects of legislative and regulatory factors
6.1   Constraints on rates
6.2   Constraints on fees, charges and contributions

7   Impacts on individuals and businesses
7.1   Issues about assessing the impacts
7.2   Previous studies of the distributional impacts of rates
7.3   Indicators of the impacts
7.4   Total rates incidence
7.5   Residential rates incidence
7.6   Business rates incidence
7.7   Impact of fees and charges

8   Principles for revenue raising
8.1   Principles to guide effective revenue raising
8.2   Application of the principles

A   Submissions, visits and roundtables
A.1   Consultations

B   Local government revenue-raising powers
B.1   Rates and property charges
B.2   Fees and charges
B.3   Other revenue
B.4   Borrowings
B.5   Defining local governing bodies

C   Data and modelling
C.1   Data sources
C.2   Assembling the data set
C.3   Estimating the income of local government areas
C.4   Approach to estimating the factors affecting revenue and the relative potential to increase revenue
C.5   Factors affecting revenue raised
C.6   Relative potential to increase revenue

D   Australian Classification of Local Governments

E   Effective property rates
E.1   Indicators of effective property rates
E.2   Effective property rates

F   Indigenous local governing bodies
F.1   Indigenous Australians and local governing bodies
F.2   Revenue raising in ILGBs
F.3   Factors affecting revenue-raising capacity
F.4   Local governing bodies - case studies

G   Residential rates incidence in the City of Charles Sturt
G.1   Data sources
G.2   Estimates of residential rates incidence

H   Referee reports on modelling
H.1   Report from Peter Abelson
H.2   Report from Joe Hirschberg

References