A rather subdued Federal Budget has been delivered in Canberra on the eve of the announcement of the federal election.

This was a Budget that Treasurer Jim Chalmers, up until ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, wasn’t expecting to deliver and it was light on detail. By way of comparison, last year’s budget ran to 200 pages whereas this year’s comes in at just 93 pages.

The FAAA says there was very little for financial services, let alone financial advisers, and nothing to address the serious issue of the ever-increasing cost of providing advice, including the growing costs arising from the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR).

Some areas that could affect financial advisers in their work with clients include:

• The Tax Practitioner Board is being beefed-up from 1 July 2025, with additional focus on tax practitioner compliance. The government expects this to increase tax receipts by $47 million.
• Surprise tax cuts were announced, with all Australian income tax payers to get a 1% tax cut in the first tax bracket next financial year and another 1% the year after. The 1% cut equates to $268 per annum per tax payer.
• A raft of measures to enforce the ban on foreign home ownership were announced.
• $717 million additional funding is amongst a suite of spends to better enable the ATO to clamp down on tax avoidance.
• ASIC will receive $207 million to spend on updating its business registers.

FAAA general manager, policy, advocacy and standards Phil Anderson said: “There is very little news in this Federal Budget and it is light on detail. Notable omissions for our profession include any CSLR or ASIC levy relief and no action on access to the ATO Portal.

“The lack of detail in the Budget follows the recent release (on Friday 21 March) of the next tranche of draft legislation for the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes reforms, which were also frustrating in their lack of scope and detail.

“It is disappointing that the government has not been able to move ahead on a clear pathway in improving the accessibility and affordability of financial advice, at a time when an increasing number of Australians would benefit from professional quality advice,” Mr Anderson says.

As a measure of the lack of relevant detail for the financial advice profession, in Budget Paper Number 2 (where details of all the spending commitments are found) there is no mention of financial advice or the CSLR, and only one mention of ASIC and two mentions of superannuation.