NIBA has joined the fight against insurance taxes with a novel approach that politicians will find hard to ignore. The association announced on Monday that brokers will enlist the muscle of NIBA members’ clients to ram the message home that high rates are being made far worse by high taxes.

CEO Noel Pettersen said NIBA members will show their clients the scale of taxes they are paying on premiums, and provide information for them to contact their local MPs on the issue.

“Every time premiums rise, the tax take also rises,” he said. “The states and territories are making hundreds of millions of dollars in windfall gains, and they should be addressing the impact this is having on all businesses, large and small.”

Referring to last week’s meeting in Canberra between federal, state and territory ministers to discuss the public liability issue, he said taxation was one area “where immediate government action could have been taken to ease the burden on insurance-buyers.”

Noting that all state and territory governments impose stamp duty on premiums after GST, to maximise the tax take – and NSW, Victoria and Tasmania also impose a fire services levy – Mr Pettersen said governments seem to have ignored the insurance industry’s continuing representations on this issue.

“They should be making it easier for business, not harder,” he said. “Hopefully the concerns of the entire business sector in Australia won’t be ignored.”

NIBA is providing its members with taxation data they can pass on to their clients. “Business is the engine that keeps the Australian economy moving,” Mr Pettersen said. “It’s totally wrong to as much as double the cost of insurance premiums with world-record levels of insurance taxes.”