Vacant housing rates are rising in our major cities. Across Australia on census night, 11.2% of housing was recorded as unoccupied – a total of 1,089,165 dwellings. With housing affordability stress also intensifying, the moment for a push on empty property taxes looks to have arrived.

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Emergency services are critical to protecting and preserving the lives, livelihoods and properties of Western Australians. Delivering and funding emergency services in a state as large and diverse as Western Australia is a complex and difficult task. The Emergency Services Levy (ESL) funds many...

Objectives

To quantify the potential impact of an additional 20% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on productivity in Australia.

Methods

We used a multi-state lifetable Markov model to examine the potential impact of an additional 20%...

The major bank levy was proposed in the 2017–18 Budget. The levy has numerous flaws including:

• The costs of the levy will likely be passed on as higher interest rates for mortgages and business loans, harming households and business investment which is very weak.
• The levy
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This paper presents the findings of two Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) that were conducted in collaboration with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The first trial tests the effect of changes to letters (timing, social norms, colour, and provision of information about charitable...

This paper outlines a methodology for forecasting the components of household final consumption expenditure, which is necessary in order to forecast revenue collections from a number of different taxes. A forecast combination approach using autoregressive models, regressions on relative prices...

The NSW Government has developed a new package of measures designed to improve housing affordability across NSW.

These policies take into account the difficulty that first home buyers face in entering the market, the state’s growing population and the need to ensure that development...

As part of the Australian Government’s response to Infrastructure Australia’s Australian Infrastructure Plan, and in line with with the Transport and Infrastructure Council’s Heavy Vehicle...

Foreword

We want to return the discussion to the important issues for most New Zealand workers and taxpayers that are often forgotten during all the talk of ‘burdens’ and ‘reliefs’: why we pay tax, what our taxes are paying for, and whether New Zealand’s tax system is...

The capital gains tax (CGT) discount is a tax concession. While personal income earned in other ways is taxed at the full marginal rate, only half the income earned from a capital gain is taxed. So if someone were to earn an additional $1,000 from extra hours at work, all the $1,000 would be...

Research Summary

This study investigated the relationships between housing, housing markets and the labour market. It considered factors such as geographic mobility, reservation wages (i.e. the minimum wage that an unemployed individual can accept) and job search behaviours across a range...

The Black Economy Taskforce has been established to develop an innovative, forward-looking, whole-of-government policy response to combat the black economy in Australia, recognising that these issues cannot be tackled by traditional tax enforcement measures alone.

The black economy refers...

The Medicare Levy is, and always has been, a fiscal fiction. The revenue raised by the levy is not ‘hypothecated’ – dedicated specifically to fund Medicare – but goes into general government revenue. Moreover, the amount of revenue raised by the levy accounts for a mere fraction of government...