Should the Stage 3 tax cuts be abandoned?

[SirRumpole]

Stage 3 tax cuts are undergoing considerable debate with pressure for them to be abandoned amidst a budget crisis.

What do you think ?

 

[PZ99]

I think they should go ahead as promised.

People who seek extra work or extra hours at work to cope with higher interest rates or rent are going to need tax relief in this bracket.

 

[moXJO]

Government wasteful spending needs to go first before any new taxes etc.

 

[SirRumpole]

Government wasteful spending needs to go first before any new taxes etc.

In what areas ?

 

[greggles]

They should go ahead. The government needs to learn to stop pissing our hard earned down the drain. Morrison's $5.5 billion submarine c*ck up still irritates me.

Don't waste our money and then tell us you can't afford the tax cuts you promised.

 

[moXJO]

In what areas ?

Every single area.
Especially building stuff.
Snowy hydro has blown out stupidly through idiotic mismanagement.

Bloody politicians perks as well the leeches.

That's not government money, it's our money. Start with those flogs first

 

[Ferret]

I think bracket creep needs to be addressed, but the stage 3 tax cuts could do with some tweaking.

However, I am absolutely fed up with politicians not keeping their promises so the tax cuts definitely should not be abandoned.

Keep the legislated tax cuts but make other tax changes after the next election reduce wealth inequality.

 

[sptrawler]

I really can't see how the tax cuts wont proceed, all the politicians qualify for the cuts, so it's really a no brainer.
I can see it now in parliament, "who wants an extra $10k in their pay packet? " 149 For and 2 Against, could someone wakeup the two sleeping members please".?


It isn't as though it hasn't been factored in and covered, 180,000 extra tax payers are coming, to help the unemployed stay unemployed?

 

[The Triangle]

Stage 3 tax cuts are undergoing considerable debate with pressure for them to be abandoned amidst a budget crisis.

What do you think ?

Keep the tax cuts but create higher brackets starting at the $500k mark. 45 cents paid on every dollar after $180/200k is not remotely the same as 45 cents paid on every dollar past $500k. The 'top' income bracket should not be anywhere near $180/$200k.

Also, maybe our votes should be proportional to the tax dollars we pay? I'd happily pay more tax If my vote was worth 4 x that of a music teacher, Melbourne barista. or ABC reporters vote.

 

[IFocus]

I cannot see the justification as they are unfunded and debt at a $Trill, there is actually a case to raise taxes IMHO.

 

[The Triangle]

I cannot see the justification as they are unfunded and debt at a $Trill, there is actually a case to raise taxes IMHO.

Nothing 'funds' tax cuts.

The irresponsible liberal (you know - the ones people think are responsible with money) government spending for the past decade was unfunded.

 

[basilio]

Perhaps the Labour Government can look at how the recent tax-cuts-for- the-top tier in UK have worked out. Some very concerning figures in this analysis.

Britain’s trickle-down budget idiocy offers a clear lesson for Australia on our stage 3 tax cuts​

Greg Jericho

The stage 3 tax cuts were always the worst policy, but now they are being done at the worst time

Britain’s trickle-down budget idiocy offers a clear lesson for Australia on our stage 3 tax cuts | Greg Jericho

The stage-three tax cuts were always the worst policy, but now they are being done at the worst time

www.theguardian.com

The stage three tax cuts are a pile of garbage, and everybody knows it | Greg Jericho

Anthony Albanese could learn a thing or two from Bob Hawke, who walked back tax cuts promised ahead of the 1983 election

www.theguardian.com

 

[SirRumpole]

Perhaps the Labour Government can look at how the recent tax-cuts-for- the-top tier in UK have worked out. Some very concerning figures in this analysis.

Britain’s trickle-down budget idiocy offers a clear lesson for Australia on our stage 3 tax cuts​

Greg Jericho
View attachment 147475

The stage 3 tax cuts were always the worst policy, but now they are being done at the worst time

Britain’s trickle-down budget idiocy offers a clear lesson for Australia on our stage 3 tax cuts | Greg Jericho

The stage-three tax cuts were always the worst policy, but now they are being done at the worst time

www.theguardian.com

The stage three tax cuts are a pile of garbage, and everybody knows it | Greg Jericho

Anthony Albanese could learn a thing or two from Bob Hawke, who walked back tax cuts promised ahead of the 1983 election

www.theguardian.com

The UK seems in deep poo. Reducing their ability to repay debt has spooked the Bank of England. Lessons for us indeed.

 

[PZ99]

"The stage-three cuts reduce the marginal tax rate faced by the $45,000 to $200,000 tax bracket to 30%."

So people earning around half the average wage or above don't need a tax cut despite their costing of living blowing out to ridiculous levels ?

Even worse.... when they try to meet the increased costs by doing extra work they are slugged even more tax again.

That's the problem with the current tax system in this country - the harder you (need to) work, the greater the disincentive to do so.

I would encourage Greg Jericho to focus on ordinary, everyday workers - they are the people struggling.

Those articles are paying too much attention to the wrong end of the income scales

Plus I'm sick of broken promises... the ALP knew the state of the budget prior to the election. They have no excuse to burn their credibility which is why they're going ahead with these cuts.

 

[SirRumpole]

"The stage-three cuts reduce the marginal tax rate faced by the $45,000 to $200,000 tax bracket to 30%."

So people earning around half the average wage or above don't need a tax cut despite their costing of living blowing out to ridiculous levels ?

Even worse.... when they try to meet the increased costs by doing extra work they are slugged even more tax again.

That's the problem with the current tax system in this country - the harder you (need to) work, the greater the disincentive to do so.

I would encourage Greg Jericho to focus on ordinary, everyday workers - they are the people struggling.

Those articles are paying too much attention to the wrong end of the income scales

Plus I'm sick of broken promises... the ALP knew the state of the budget prior to the election. They have no excuse to burn their credibility which is why they're going ahead with these cuts.

So if the tax cuts were limited to say under $100k that would be ok ?

 

[PZ99]

So if the tax cuts were limited to say under $100k that would be ok ?

Not really. $100k doesn't really do much around here unless you're completely debt free. Plus if you're single that would bounce you over the Medicare surcharge if you don't have private health cover so you get hit even harder... I think it should be left as is unchanged.

Then there's that good ole bracket creep.. even $200k won't mean much in the not too distant future.

 

[moXJO]

Perhaps the Labour Government can look at how the recent tax-cuts-for- the-top tier in UK have worked out. Some very concerning figures in this analysis.

Britain’s trickle-down budget idiocy offers a clear lesson for Australia on our stage 3 tax cuts​

Greg Jericho
View attachment 147475

The stage 3 tax cuts were always the worst policy, but now they are being done at the worst time

Britain’s trickle-down budget idiocy offers a clear lesson for Australia on our stage 3 tax cuts | Greg Jericho

The stage-three tax cuts were always the worst policy, but now they are being done at the worst time

www.theguardian.com

The stage three tax cuts are a pile of garbage, and everybody knows it | Greg Jericho

Anthony Albanese could learn a thing or two from Bob Hawke, who walked back tax cuts promised ahead of the 1983 election

www.theguardian.com

Do better with the ocean of tax revenue they already get.
Inflation is basically a tax. All that previous government wasted spending.

Dick article

 

[PZ99]

In this article as treasurer you have the choice of tax cuts or other cuts and/or spending.

You be the treasurer: scrap the stage-three tax cuts, spend money, or pay down the federal budget deficit

Tax cuts for high-income earners, build a bullet train, add dental to Medicare or build more social housing? You decide with our interactive guide

www.theguardian.com

Naturally I made a predicable choice for Neg Gearing

 

[JohnDe]

I cannot see the justification as they are unfunded and debt at a $Trill, there is actually a case to raise taxes IMHO.

Why don't we just work for food, fuel, medicine and an equal cash allowance? That way we're all equal, right?

We have an extremely inefficient tax system, too reliant on income tax, full of disincentives and perverse penalties, the enemy of productivity. With free healthcare, extravagant transfer payments and the NDIS running out of control, Australia has one of the most progressive (meaning the rich pay more) tax and welfare systems in the world.​

On a bipartisan path to ruin: our leaders have lost the plot on reform

The Albanese government deserves every criticism for abandoning stage three tax cuts. In trashing a solemn, repeated promise, it debauches our political culture. Who can now say it won’t abandon promises on AUKUS or national security?
And it’s abandoned good tax reform.

But there’s a different lesson here. This also represents failure by the Liberal and National parties and signals the decay of our political culture. We’re drifting towards Australian Peronis m. I’ll explain that term in a minute. The broader point is our politics is now all but incapable of meaningful policy reform, apart from endlessly bigger transfer payments to ourselves.

Consider tax, Australia Day and Defence.

We have an extremely inefficient tax system, too reliant on income tax, full of disincentives and perverse penalties, the enemy of productivity. Neither side of politics can reform it. The most striking statistic is economist Chris Richardson’s calculation that the top 1 per cent of income earners pay tax equivalent to the entire tax contribution of the bottom (in income terms) 77 per cent of adults.

With free healthcare, extravagant transfer payments and the NDIS running out of control, Australia has one of the most progressive (meaning the rich pay more) tax and welfare systems in the world.

The three stage tax cuts were announced in 2018, then legislated in 2019. Stages one and two gave great benefits to low-income earners. Stage three, which tried to reduce disincentives and complexities higher up the tax scale, didn’t come into operation for six years after they were announced.

That meant the pro-low income down payment of the early tax cuts was completely disassociated in the public mind from the upper-income scale reforms. That the Liberal-National government did its reform this way shows that in fact it was far too cowardly ever to do the reform at all. This is a political first cousin of AUKUS submarines. A government does absolutely nothing right now but promises something grand long in the future, almost certainly when it has ceased to be in office.

On this occasion, this has worked tactically well enough for the Coalition. It forced Anthony Albanese to support the tax cuts in opposition and then can blame him for breaking a promise in government. The result, however, is a total failure in tax reform for the nation.

The Coalition wouldn’t do the whole reform at once both because it couldn’t meet the spending discipline needed to fund it, and because it couldn’t bear the political pain of being seen to do something that helped higher-income earners, even if this was much less than even returning bracket creep. It could of course have done a smaller version of all three stages at once. But the Liberals really couldn’t and wouldn’t do tax reform, they couldn’t manage the politics.

In the entire decade of Coalition government, the Liberals never cut the highly uncompetitive top marginal tax rate of 47 per cent (including the Medicare levy). More important, they never adjusted the low threshold at which it comes into effect of $180,000.

Really rich people don’t pay regular income tax. Form yourself into a legal company and you pay 30 per cent tax instead of 47 per cent. There is an infinity of more complex tax arrangements. The more complex the tax system, the more incentive for inherently worthless, artificial schemes.
The bottom line is that in office the Coalition never had the courage of its convictions in tax reform. It’s not surprising that the Albanese government doesn’t have the courage of the Liberals’ convictions either.

We’ve just passed an Australia Day in which, grotesquely, our major cities didn’t have traditional national day parades, making us one of very few countries in the world too confused, conflicted, fraudulently ashamed of ourselves to even properly celebrate national achievements such as continuing democracy, the rule of law, universal citizenship, etc.

Australia Day has been effectively destroyed by the onslaught of identity politics over the past 15 years. Mostly, this identity politics campaign has not been an expression of popular discontent coming up from the grassroots of society, but rather an academic- and activist-led top-down campaign. The vast cohort of the activist and academic leadership are paid, ultimately, with government money, or sometimes with the money of giant corporations.

We’ve just had Cricket Australia announce, then apparently reverse, a decision not even to acknowledge Australia’s national day. The national cricket captain, Pat Cummins, is opposed to the national day on January 26. What an interesting contrast to the treatment of elite footballer Israel Folau. In a personal social media post Folau slightly mangles a verse of the New Testament and is driven out of professional sport and prevented from ever earning his chosen living again. Cummins as national cricket captain opposes an elementary national symbol and is a candidate for sainthood.

The Albanese Labor Party promised in opposition to keep and support Australia Day, but in office has effectively done nothing to defend it. Australians voted against identity politics in the voice referendum 61 per cent to 39 per cent. But no one apparently takes any notice of them.

Yet in the decade of Coalition government, Canberra fully funded the Aboriginal grievance industry. Nor would the Coalition ever clearly state its purpose in constitutional terms, which led numerous Aboriginal leaders to conclude, mistakenly, that the Coalition offered much greater scope for constitutional change than it really did. In the end the Coalition was forced to take a clear position opposing the voice because of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s personal leadership. The crisis in our national purpose, identity and symbols brought on by identity politics was underwritten by the Liberal-National parties long before Labor came to government.

The Albanese government’s decision not to send a ship to the Red Sea to help guarantee freedom of commerce in that vital shipping route is perhaps a turning point in modern Australian history, a devastating sign of our ramshackle military decrepitude and our ultimate lack of strategic seriousness. Yet the dismal, antique navy surface fleet we have today is also the product of a decade of Coalition government.


https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/db963d8ba441cc130796902b9647d98b
President of Argentina, Juan Domingo Peron with his wife Eva (Evita) 1949 (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

So, Peronism? Argentina, like Australia, has a small, well-educated population and a big territory with agricultural and mineral riches. Under Juan Peron it developed stylised and ideological politics, featuring ever-growing transfer payments, crippling budget deficits, pro-trade union industrial relations, second-rate nationalism and creeping authoritarianism. Its government and people assumed there would always be money to spend. The political system became toxic, and abusive. The only thing people believed from government was cash in hand.

It’s the path to ruin. It’s the path we’re seemingly on.

 

[The Triangle]

In what areas ?

Look at your tax receipt... Aged care and welfare in general.

Blowing a major % of our budget on people (corrupt people and American private equity) who will never contribute to the economy.