Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering an Efficient and Trusted Tax System) Act 2026 (58 of 2026)

Schedule 4   Exclusion of tobacco and gambling related activities from the Research and Development Tax Incentive

Part 1   Amendments

Income Tax Assessment Act 1997

3   At the end of subsection 355-25(2)

Add:

; (i) an activity that relates to any of the following, unless the activity is covered by subsection (3) (harm minimisation purpose):

(i) a gambling service (within the meaning of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001);

(ii) gambling;

(iii) a gambling-like practice;

(j) an activity that relates to any of the following, unless the activity is covered by subsection (4) (harm minimisation purpose):

(i) tobacco (see subsections (5) and (6));

(ii) a tobacco product (as defined in section 9 of the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023);

(iii) a tobacco product accessory (as defined in section 10 of the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023);

(iv) a vaping good (as defined in section 41P of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989);

(v) tobacco extract;

(vi) goods where tobacco or tobacco extract is used or added during the manufacturing or processing of the goods (whether or not tobacco or tobacco extract remains in the goods);

(vii) goods containing nicotine that are intended for use or consumption by humans, other than food in which the only nicotine is naturally occurring.

Harm minimisation purpose

(3) An activity is covered by this subsection if the activity is conducted solely for the purpose of generating new knowledge about minimising harm from gambling services (within the meaning of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001), gambling or gambling-like practices, in relation to a person or the Australian community.

(4) An activity is covered by this subsection if the activity is conducted solely for the purpose of:

(a) generating new knowledge about the therapeutic use (within the meaning of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989) of therapeutic goods (within the meaning of that Act) for minimising harm from a thing mentioned in any of subparagraphs (2)(j)(i) to (vii); or

(b) generating new knowledge about ceasing the ingestion or transfer of nicotine into the human body.

Things treated as tobacco

(5) For the purposes of this section, treat as tobacco any thing (including moisture) added to the tobacco leaf during manufacturing or processing.

(6) To avoid doubt, for the purposes of this section:

(a) treat tobacco seed, tobacco plant (whether or not in the ground) and tobacco leaf as tobacco; and

(b) treat cigars, cigarettes and snuff as tobacco.