16 May 2004
THE PERSONAL INCOME TAX RIP OFF
It is hard to imagine a more cynical budget than the smirking Costello just tossed us. Tax us to blazes for a couple of years running up into an Election and then give “hand outs” back to the marginal Labour voters. Forget the small businesses –they’ll vote Lib anyway.
Will they now they have a real option?
Look at the table and understand how Costello weaves his web. Of all the tax collected in Australia by the three levels of Government over the past 5 years, individuals have paid about 40% in personal Income Tax, enterprises about 15 % and you guessed it, foreigners including the multinationals have paid about 0.5%!! Ordinary Australians are paying 80 times the Income Tax of the multinationals. Add the bracket creep and we are the big eared small brained bunnies in that brown land in the southern ocean.
Our tax system needs a reform not a fiddle.
The Great Australians AusEtax Plan is a simple reform –
• Abolish the Double Tax Conventions which exempt foreign companies from paying Income Tax
• Introduce a simple transaction tax
• Abolish the horrible six taxes which strangle small business and our work ethic – Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Goods and Services Tax, Superannuation Tax, Federal Payroll tax and Fringe Benefits Tax
• Collect about the same as the Feds do now – 25% of GDP (see the last column in the table)
• Achieve this by starting the transaction tax rate at 2% and tweak it up or down to collect about 25% of GDP
The politics will be out of Tax.
The Government and private sector will save about half the cost of collection.
More money for schools and hospitals.
