Apart from this point of similarity in mechanism, the Australian and Canadian subsidies to the States and Provinces respectively are of no value as models for a Home Rule Bill. Let us examine the case of Australia. There the Commonwealth, besides having exclusive control of Customs and Excise, has general powers of taxation concurrently with the States, though in practice Commonwealth taxation is almost entirely confined to Customs and Excise. All surplus Commonwealth revenue is, by the present law, returnable to the States, and the total annual amount so returned must not be less than three-fourths of the total proceeds of Customs and Excise; so large are these proceeds, and so small, relatively, the expenses of the Commonwealth Government.[143] Here at the outset is a feature which places Australian Federal Finance in an altogether different category to that of the United Kingdom, where only 47.6 per cent, of the revenue is from Customs and Excise. Nor are the distributions of surplus revenue to the States really "subsidies," even in the case of the poorest States, but repayments, on a method laid down in the Constitution, of that part of the State contribution to Federal services which the Federal Government does not want. Here the system of bookkeeping is of some service to us, because it reveals, approximately, at any rate, both the contribution and the actual repayment, which is based on a calculation of the amount saved to the State by the transference of certain departments to the Federal Government, set off by a _per capita_ charge for new Federal expenditure, as, for example, for Old Age Pensions (see Table on p. 297).