Individual income taxes in Australia raise nearly half of federal government revenue. This note offers a new perspective on the efficiency and equity implications of the individual income tax system. The findings paint two starkly different pictures of horizontal and vertical equity in effective tax rates at high and low levels of income.

The New South Wales JobSaver program was a job retention scheme that supported businesses and workers during the 2021 COVID-19 lockdowns by subsidising a proportion of firms’ payroll expenses. But like the federal JobKeeper program, it may have preserved jobs during the lockdown at the cost of poorer future labour market outcomes for the workers...

The JobSeeker Coronavirus Supplement was designed to support households that experienced job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper found that these higher benefit payments lead to a change in labour market behaviour, reducing the incentive for people to work. It provides three lessons from the research.

Approximately 1 in 10 working-age Australians provide unpaid care to people with disabilities, long-term health issues, or age-related conditions. This research note shows that informal caregiving responsibilities have significant costs for those who provide these services; however, the overall labour market effects appear to be moderate.

The number of unemployment benefit recipients who remained on the unemployment benefit long-term (for two or more years) has climbed from 150,000 to nearly half a million between 2006 and early 2023. Does such a steep rise reflect a growing culture of benefit dependency in Australia? The authors of this paper find that it does...