Peter Saunders analyses how the welfare state might be transformed to give ordinary people more control over key areas of their lives which are currently managed for them by the government. Saunders demonstates that, to a large extent, we no longer need the welfare state. Most people could afford to buy most of the services...

Advocates of higher taxation often point to OECD figures suggesting Australia enjoys lower than average tax levels. But in this paper Peter Burn argues these claims are misleading. He says that a careful reading of OECD statistics shows our tax levels are on a par with the OECD average. He also finds that Australian taxes...

Private school fees are not tax deductible in Australia. Nor are fees or levies paid to public schools. However, many private schools and some public schools operate building or library funds to which parents and ex-students are encouraged to make tax-deductible donations. These donations can increase substantially the funds available to the schools and thereby...

Currently, there is much debate regarding income tax rates and possible tax cuts. Part of this debate concerns higher income earners and whether they should receive tax cuts--either through lowering their marginal tax rate and/or increasing the income threshold at which their marginal tax rate takes effect. In this research note Stephen Barber provides statistics...

Stephen Barber and Andrew Kopras take recently published postcode taxation statistics and aggregate them to an electorate basis. Summary information on such items as taxpayers, taxable income, tax paid and net tax ratio are shown for each electorate in Australia. Six tables ranking the electorates by various taxation categories are provided as well as two...