A step towards fairness, but still an unfair system
Mike Steketee
25 May 2010 |Low-income earners will be further disadvantaged by the super increase, writes Mike Steketee in the Australian
LAST NOVEMBER, Wayne Swan confronted the reality of tax reform, the beast unleashed when Kevin Rudd came up with what seemed like the bright idea of reviewing the tax system.
Reform was hard, said Swan, "and made even harder by an expectation that every single taxpayer must be financially better off for a change to be made. This ignores a simple reality of tax reform, that in a fiscally constrained environment there will inevitably be winners and losers."
That was then and this is an election year. Now there are only winners, including, you'd better believe it, the mining industry under Ken Henry's pride and joy, the resource super-profits tax -- well, all but a few big nasty multinationals. The government thought it could insure against the damage of a new tax by using the proceeds to fund a series of goodies: more superannuation, lower company tax and...
A step towards fairness, but still an unfair system
LAST NOVEMBER, Wayne Swan confronted the reality of tax reform, the beast unleashed when Kevin Rudd came up with what seemed like the bright idea of reviewing the tax system.
Reform was hard, said Swan, "and made even harder by an expectation that every single taxpayer must be financially better off for a change to be made. This ignores a simple reality of tax reform, that in a fiscally constrained environment there will inevitably be winners and losers."
That was then and this is an election year. Now there are only winners, including, you'd better believe it, the mining industry under Ken Henry's pride and joy, the resource super-profits tax -- well, all but a few big nasty multinationals. The government thought it could insure against the damage of a new tax by using the proceeds to fund a series of goodies: more superannuation, lower company tax and...
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