The legislation introducing the new Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive (JMEI) has been introduced into Federal Parliament this week – Treasury Laws Amendment (Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive) Bill 2017

The Bill amends the tax law to replace the former Exploration Development Incentive (EDI) with the JMEI.  Like the EDI, the JMEI provides a tax incentive to invest in small minerals exploration companies undertaking greenfields minerals exploration in Australia. Australian resident investors of these companies receive a tax incentive where the companies choose to give up a portion of their tax losses relating to their exploration expenditure in an income year.

Unlike the EDI, under the JMEI:

• eligibility for the incentive is limited to investors that purchase newly issued shares; and
• the incentive is allocated between eligible exploration companies on a first come, first served process (subject to integrity requirements) until the annual cap has been reached

The scheme applies from 1 July 2017 until 30 June 2021, with total credits limited to $100 million. There is a cap on the amount of credits that may be allocated to an entity of five per cent of the total amount available for each year.

For full details on the new JMEI, see the Explanatory Notes on the Bill

It is expected that this will be passed before the end of the year.

Queensland Minerals Council media release, 19 Oct 2017