24 June 2017

Who wouldn’t like to get a huge pay increase? According to RBA governor Philip Lowe we should all be nagging our bosses for a greater share of the national economic pie. If we all got a huge pay increase that “would be a good thing”. Mind you – keeping our jobs would be a very good thing. Therein lies the

23 June 2017

“A South Australian Bank levy is an outrageous act of economic vandalism,” said RMIT Professor Sinclair Davidson, Senior Fellow at free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. “This is precisely the sort of state-based nuisance tax that the GST was brought in to eliminate. It is very disappointing that politicians are reneging on the tax deal that the

23 June 2017

The relationship between taxpayers and government should be symbiotic – to the mutual benefit of each party. This is certainly what Adam Smith had in mind when he wrote that everyone should contribute to the support of government in proportion to the revenue they enjoy under the protection of the state. He also wrote that paying tax was a badge

16 June 2017

“Progressive” think tank Per Capita recently released the results of their annual tax survey. It turns out that 51.5 per cent of Australians think they pay about the right amount of tax. 39.6 per cent reckon they pay too much and a mere 1.9 per cent think they pay too little tax. It turns out that both young and old

4 May 2017

It is pre-budget silly season again. You know, the time of year when we get to hear all of the good -reasons why government should spend more money. It is also when we get to hear why government should tax more. To hear some people tell it, the power of taxation is quite astonishing – it can solve any and

21 April 2017

“The government’s plan to impose GST on goods purchased from foreign online retailers is a tax increase and should be rejected by the parliament”, said Dr Chris Berg. Dr Berg and Professor Sinclair Davidson, RMIT economists and senior fellows at the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, will appear this morning before the Senate Economics Legislation Committee

11 April 2017

The Turnbull government’s proposal to eliminate the $1000 threshold before the GST is levied on imported goods is not a tax integrity measure. It is a tariff, and one that will have serious repercussions that the government does not seem to have considered seriously. The end of the low-value threshold was first flagged by the government in December 2014. It

28 March 2017

The Turnbull government’s diverted profit tax has passed the Parliament. Introduced in response to the moral panic that, somewhere, somehow multinational corporations don’t pay a fair share of taxation, this new tax is at odds with the government’s professed belief in lowering the corporate tax burdens, is at odds with our international competitors, and (as we learnt just this month),

24 February 2017

Populism is being mainstreamed in Australia. At a book launch former prime minister Tony Abbott set out an aggressive populist agenda for Australia – presumably a second Abbott government. Abolish the renewable energy target, abolish the Human Rights Commission, cut spending, reform the Senate, and cut immigration. This from a man who couldn’t amend a single section of the Racial

20 February 2017

The latest annual IMF Australia Consultation might have passed unnoticed but for this highly damning statement: “the new mediocre”. Perhaps they were being polite – Australia’s lacklustre fiscal performance has become the new normal or just mediocre. There is nothing new about the increasing debt and ongoing deficits we have experienced since the Rudd government panicked in 2008 and went