{"id":"BILL-r7383","name":"Corporations (Review Fees) Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2025","slug":"corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025","collection":"bill","jurisdiction":"commonwealth","status":"in_force","isInForce":true,"actNumber":null,"makingDate":null,"administeringDepartment":null,"currentVersion":{"id":446053,"registerId":"commonwealth-BILL-r7383-current","compilationNumber":null,"startDate":"2026-05-05","status":"royal_assent","reasons":null,"registeredAt":null},"sections":[],"analysis":{"summary":{"status_summary":"The bill received royal assent on 13 March 2026 and commenced on 14 March 2026 as Act No. 6 of 2026.","complexity_score":2,"likely_questions":["What exact fee items from the regulations are validated by the new section 7A?","Does the Act require companies to take any action regarding past fee payments?"],"complexity_factors":["involves validation of fees under specific historical regulations","retrospective application to collections from 2011 onwards"],"plain_english_summary":"The Corporations (Review Fees) Amendment (Technical Amendments) Act 2026 validates ASIC’s annual review fees (including indexation) collected from 1 July 2011 to 11 March 2025, treating those past fee calculations as legally effective. It affects companies and other corporations that paid review fees by confirming those payments remain valid and providing legal certainty for both fee payers and the regulator.\n\nThe Act does not create new fees or alter fees from 12 March 2025 onward. It received royal assent on 13 March 2026 and commenced the following day."},"flash_summary":{"complexity_score":5,"scope_assessment":{"changed":false,"description":"This Act is a corrective, retrospective validation rather than an expansion of regulatory powers. It does not create new fees, broaden ASIC's fee‑setting authority, or add ongoing compliance obligations. Its purpose is to cure a technical/administrative defect in how certain historical fees were treated, confined to particular fee items and a specified date range; accordingly it does not significantly change the original scope of the Corporations (Review Fees) Act 2003."},"complexity_factors":["Single, short insertion (one new section 7A) — limited length","Several cross‑references to other instruments: specific items in Schedule 1 to the Corporations (Review Fees) Regulations 2003","Temporal conditions spanning multiple financial years (FY starting 1 July 2011 through FY starting 1 July 2024) and a specific cut‑off tied to commencement of 2025 amending regulations","Deeming provision that substitutes the legal effect of one subregulation (4(6)) for another (4(5)) — requires reading those regulations to understand the practical arithmetic/administration change","Narrow scope defined by multiple nested conditions (which items, which time window, and special rule for review dates in the 2024–25 financial year)"],"plain_english_summary":"**What this Act does (mechanically)\n\n- Inserts a new section (7A) into the Corporations (Review Fees) Act 2003 that retrospectively \"validates\" certain review fees charged by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).\n- The validation applies to review fees for financial years starting 1 July 2011 up to and including the financial year starting 1 July 2024, but only for fees that were prescribed by particular items in Schedule 1 to the Corporations (Review Fees) Regulations as those items existed between the start of the 2011 amending regulations and immediately before the start of the 2025 amending regulations. It also covers review dates in the 2024–25 financial year that happened before the 2025 amending regulations commenced. (See new s.7A(1)–(3).)\n- Legally, the Act treats the amount of each affected fee as if a different sub‑regulation (subregulation 4(6) rather than 4(5)) had applied when those fees were set. In short: the statute declares that the fees collected were, and always were, the amounts they would have been under that alternate calculation rule (new s.7A(2)).\n\nWho is affected\n\n- ASIC: the regulator that set and collected the fees. The Act protects the legality of fees it charged in the specified period.\n- People and businesses who paid those particular review fees during the covered years: this includes private parties who might otherwise have a basis to seek refunds or challenge the amounts charged.\n- Courts and tribunals: the amendment changes the legal basis on which past fee amounts can be litigated or questioned.\n\nWhy it matters (official purpose, then tested against costs and incentives)\n\n- Official purpose (as stated in explanatory material): to validate fees and the indexation applied to them so that amounts collected between 1 July 2011 and 11 March 2025 are legally certain.\n\n- Practical effect and trade‑offs:\n  - Who pays: the burden of any error (if there was one) stays with fee payers unless a separate refund mechanism is created. The amendment prevents retrospective legal challenges that could force ASIC (and ultimately the Commonwealth) to repay collected amounts for those specific fees.\n  - Who benefits: ASIC/the Commonwealth benefits from preserved revenue and legal certainty about past collections; fee payers lose the prospect of reversal or refunds for the validated period.\n  - Behavioural effects: fewer incentives for litigation about the specified past fees; reduced administrative and court costs associated with disputes over those historic fees.\n  - Compliance and administrative impact: minimal going forward — this is retrospective clarification, not a new ongoing obligation. It does not change current fee‑setting discretion or introduce ongoing reporting requirements.\n  - Implementation risks and trade‑offs: retrospective validation reduces legal uncertainty but may impose distributional costs on affected businesses and individuals who paid under the earlier regime. It transfers the financial effect of correcting a regulatory or drafting error from government to private payers for the covered years. The amendment is narrowly framed to particular fee items and to a defined date range, which limits scope but concentrates the benefit (avoiding refunds) for the Commonwealth.\n\nKey mechanics to note (legal detail in plain terms)\n\n- The Act does not create new fees or new fee powers. It changes how the law treats certain past fees by \"deeming\" they were calculated under a different subregulation (new s.7A(2)).\n- The validation is limited in time and to specific items in the Review Fees Regulations — it is not a broad amnesty for all ASIC fees.\n\nRelevant provision: new section 7A (subsections (1)–(3))."}},"importantCases":[],"_links":{"self":"/api/acts/corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025","history":"/api/acts/corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025/history","analysis":"/api/acts/corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025/analysis","conflicts":"/api/acts/corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025/conflicts","importantCases":"/api/acts/corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025/important-cases","documents":"/api/acts/corporations-review-fees-amendment-technical-amendments-bill-2025/documents"}}