Written by one of the 'five economists', Peter Dawkins, this paper focuses on the plan's best-known proposal, the wage-tax trade-off, discussing its impact on employment, unemployment and income distribution. The paper considers new evidence on the impact of the plan and responds to its critics.

International travellers -- mainly higher income earners -- can buy "duty-free" cigarettes and spirits for around half of the normal retail price because they are exempted from excises and GST. Although the Federal Government does not publish an official estimate of the costs to the budget of the current duty-free arrangements, the system of duty...

Kristina Murphy writes that during the 1990s, Australian taxpayers who invested in mass marketed tax schemes enjoyed generous tax breaks until the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) told them in 1998 that they abused the system. This paper examines the circumstances surrounding the decision of taxpayers' to invest in scheme arrangements, and investors' perceptions of...

The study reported in this paper by Steve Morgan and Kristina Murphy examined rural taxpayers' attitudes towards both the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) and the tax system. Data were taken from the Community Hopes, Fears and Actions Survey (Braithwaite, 2000), completed by a random sample of 2040 Australian taxpayers. Results from a series of...

Taxpayer compliance with tax law may seem to fall, by definition, into the category of cooperation with the tax system. Indeed, securing compliance with the law is the driving force behind the compliance model of enforcement (Ayres & Braithwaite, 1992) which has been adopted by the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) and other regulatory agencies...