Should the Stage 3 tax cuts be abandoned?

[basilio]

Difficult, difficult times for those grievously affected by changes to the Stage 3 Tax cuts.

Tragedy as Tax Changes Force Vaucluse Couple to Scale Back on Second Aspen Holiday​

In heart wrenching news from Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, Samantha and Marcus Charlesworth say they may need to do the unthinkable and downgrade from a four-bedroom to a three-bedroom chalet on their trip to Aspen this December.

The couple says the drastic decision was necessitated by the Government’s changes to the stage 3 tax cuts, which will mean they will only receive a few thousand extra dollars a year.

In an emotional interview with the Daily Telegraph, the couple – who earn just $880,000 a year between them – said they weren’t even sure how they were going to make ends meet. “We’re living on a shoestring as it is. No one should have to choose between buying a birkin handbag and a third investment property for their children. But that’s what we’re facing if these changes go through,” Samantha said.
She said there was a misconception about what it cost to live in Australia. “We’re not rich by any stretch of the imagination. Once you pay the fees for the gardener and the personal trainer and the yacht mooring, there’s not a lot left to go around. Some months I get the quarterly gas bill for the indoor pool and I think ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay that’. I mean, I literally don’t know how I’m going to pay it. I don’t know how to use internet billing, I’ve always got my personal assistant to look after that kind of thing”.

Marcus said after not voting Labor for the past 30 years, he would not be voting Labor at the next election. “This Government doesn’t realise how tough it can be. It’s not as if we’re eating caviar every night! That’s only on Tuesdays’.

 

[JohnDe]

Difficult, difficult times for those grievously affected by changes to the Stage 3 Tax cuts.

Tragedy as Tax Changes Force Vaucluse Couple to Scale Back on Second Aspen Holiday​

View attachment 169870


In heart wrenching news from Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, Samantha and Marcus Charlesworth say they may need to do the unthinkable and downgrade from a four-bedroom to a three-bedroom chalet on their trip to Aspen this December.

The couple says the drastic decision was necessitated by the Government’s changes to the stage 3 tax cuts, which will mean they will only receive a few thousand extra dollars a year.

In an emotional interview with the Daily Telegraph, the couple – who earn just $880,000 a year between them – said they weren’t even sure how they were going to make ends meet. “We’re living on a shoestring as it is. No one should have to choose between buying a birkin handbag and a third investment property for their children. But that’s what we’re facing if these changes go through,” Samantha said.
She said there was a misconception about what it cost to live in Australia. “We’re not rich by any stretch of the imagination. Once you pay the fees for the gardener and the personal trainer and the yacht mooring, there’s not a lot left to go around. Some months I get the quarterly gas bill for the indoor pool and I think ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay that’. I mean, I literally don’t know how I’m going to pay it. I don’t know how to use internet billing, I’ve always got my personal assistant to look after that kind of thing”.

Marcus said after not voting Labor for the past 30 years, he would not be voting Labor at the next election. “This Government doesn’t realise how tough it can be. It’s not as if we’re eating caviar every night! That’s only on Tuesdays’.

Sounds like the old political classic ‘Divide and conquer’

‘Divide and conquer’ key to Anthony Albanese’s class warfare

From tax cuts to Gaza and the voice, Anthony Albanese wants revolution not evolution.

You don’t have to be a dewy-eyed romanticist about the past to believe that in the past year Australia has become angrier and more divided than we can ever recall.
The evidence is everywhere. White versus black, rich versus poor, women versus men, women versus trans, and every other schism one can imagine yawns wider than it ever did. For some, this is not only deliberate but necessary. And, indeed, a damn good thing. You can’t have a revolution without conflict.

However, because Marxist conflict theory and old notions about class warfare are discredited everywhere in Australia (except in our law schools and other radical corners of our universities), it is not politically astute to advertise that you are deliberately stoking conflict. As an instrument of statecraft, inciting and capitalising on division is a decidedly old-fashioned and brutish concept. That is why the Albanese government is polishing its messages to hide its intent. Pull the curtain aside, and its modern political platform is deeply rooted in class, race and gender wars.

While superficially playing a neutral and reassuring game, this government believes Australia is broken and needs radical change, which can only be achieved after, and as a result of, significant conflict. Like its tax policies, none of this was advertised at the 2022 election.

Because most Australians think Australia is basically a pretty good place, which only needs incremental rather than revolutionary change, a political party that wants to make major change must hide that from the voting public.

The voice was a classic example. The government tried to tell mainstream Australia this was a minor change, a simple matter of good manners. It did so even though those drafting the words were saying the opposite. Though the government did fail miserably in its constitutional quest, the ugly and bitter campaign did achieve one of its goals; by stirring up anger and division, it energised activists to intensify their fight.

The most rancorous Australia Day in history is testament to that. The aim of activists is to make Australia Day so contentious it will have to be abandoned. Predictably, those who want to mark Australia Day are not taking this lying down. Peter Dutton’s call for a boycott of Woolworths for its apparent abandonment of Australia Day is in fact reactive – he is simply channelling the anger many feel about the activists.

Moreover, it’s likely that dialling up the rhetoric against Australia Day – with local councils refusing to hold citizenship ceremonies and Tennis Australia refusing to mark Australia Day – will simply generate much more heat and light without effecting any substantive change.

Success by the activists will simply perpetuate the division. If a new Australia Day is chosen, the anger of those unhappy with the change will be directed to changing the new date. Division will become permanent.

A particularly repulsive new form of division has emerged from the grisly merger between the Indigenous sovereignty movement and the pro-Palestine movement. Anthony Albanese cannot wash his hands of what he has wrought. By stoking the “always was, always will be” claims about ownership of Australian land he made it inevitable this particular narrative of colonial dispossession would merge with claims that Israel too is a colonial power. The “always was, always will be” crowd have joined in conflict with the “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” brigade.

As if we weren’t divided enough about Gaza with every conceivable group from the LGBTQ Mardi Gras to the ABC violently split, now we are told to view Gaza through the prism of colonialism and dispossession. When virtually every event in human history is explained by some variant of oppressor/oppressed analysis, and everyone is allocated to one or other of those buckets, it is any wonder we find more and more reasons to divide ourselves up into warring groups?

Mind you, this division into oppressor and oppressed can bring benefits to some members of the allegedly oppressed. Indeed, some members of these groups become the new privileged, immune from criticism or punishment no matter how badly they behave.

For example, until this newspaper exposed the death threats made by Indigenous cultural adviser Ian Brown against white project manager Rochelle Hicks, it appeared Brown’s Indigeneity gave him immunity from the normal legal consequences of his actions.

At the ABC, impartiality rules don’t seem to cover the work of Indigenous affairs editor Bridget Brennan.

In her Australia Day news report, she announced that the country “always was and always will be Aboriginal land”. After the Prime Minister released proposed words for the voice in July 2022, Brennan appeared on ABC’s Insiders panel telling Australians the voice must include reparations. These are the demands of an activist stoking division, not an impartial journalist.

Under this government, class warfare – the forerunner of the kinds of conflict theories that drive colonialism, race and gender wars – remains a critical part of its political playbook.

Anthony – “my word is my bond” – Albanese has reneged on the stage three tax cuts in favour of “divide and conquer” class war politics. The PM is effectively saying, without a hint of shame, that it is fine for him to break the promise that was crucial to winning the 2022 election because it enables him to take from the rich to give to the poor.

You can ignore the PM’s cries of “we had no alternative”. Reneging on stage three was a deliberate choice of one preferred policy among a large number of options. If the PM wanted to provide more cost-of-living relief while still keeping the tax cuts, there would have been many ways to fund it. Spending cuts or deferrals of environmental or industrial policy would be but a few of the obvious ways for him to have kept his promise on stage three while still funding cost-of-living relief.

No, the real reason the PM broke his promise is that he is still “fighting Tories”. Class warfare, it would seem, justifies any dishonesty in the PM’s world.

Wedded to identity politics, the Albanese government is going to war on many fronts, knowingly fermenting division while apparently promising to fix society. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, for example, has released discussion papers aimed at dramatically skewing the law on sexual assault.

Everything is on the table, it would seem, from specialist courts with suitable attitudes, to re-education camps for lawyers involved in this work, to the abandonment of trial by jury in favour of some method of adjudication that will ensure more convictions.

Everything is being considered, it would seem, except for any consideration of the rights of accused persons. They are apparently expendable. Mere roadkill in the path of the new conviction-focused juggernaut.

A successful, peaceful country needs values that unite us. Australians have shown time and again they have no time for class warfare, or warfare based on race, gender or any other form of identity politics. This is why the ALP has spent so little time in office federally since World War II. However, it explains why this Labor government wants to do as much as it can as quickly as it can while it still has a House of Representatives majority and a favourable Senate. It wants revolution not evolution, and is prepared to stoke division to get there. What it needs to remember though is that revolutions have a nasty habit of eating their own.

 

[basilio]

A detailed analysis of the effects of the proposed changes in Stage 3 tax cuts. The profile and interests of ASF posters is not going to be the broader communities. Not surprising about the commentary on changes.

The graph that illustrates the numbers of people who are affected at each step of the income tax schedule highlights how many Australians are earning less than $150k PA

How the revised tax cuts affect people like you​

By Inga Ting, Thomas Brettell, Katia Shatoba and Alex Lim

Digital Story Innovation Team
Updated 2 Feb 2024, 1:16pm
Published 2 Feb 2024, 6:00am
An act of class warfare or a bid to ensure “no one is left behind”?

The Labor government’s dramatic redesign of the Stage 3 tax cuts has been accused of “pitting one Australian against the other” – and it’s clear that there will be winners and losers.

Under the proposed changes, everyone with a taxable income below $146,486 will receive a larger tax cut than under the original plan, while top income earners will walk away with much less than promised.

But which neighbourhoods, occupations and age groups are more likely to win or lose from the revised plan? We’ve delved into the data to find out how different parts of Australia compare.

Nurse, teacher, surgeon — is your job likely to win from the revised tax cuts?

Which neighbourhoods, occupations and age groups are more likely to benefit or miss out from the redesign of the stage 3 tax cuts? We've delved into the data to find out how different parts of Australia compare.

www.abc.net.au

 

[basilio]

It seems the Liberals have decided that opposing the revised Stage 3 tax cuts would be practically dumb and politically suicidal.
The ABC has presented an another analysis of how the Stage 1,2 and 3 tax cuts would affect the community.

The graph below can be changed as per percentage vs dollars and direct income.

This is the magic income set to win the biggest percentage tax cut from the revised plan

Confused about how much you'll actually be get across all three stages of the tax cuts? Exclusive new data reveals how much you need to earn to reap the biggest percentage return if the redesigned tax cuts are passed into law.

www.abc.net.au

 

[IFocus]

It seems the Liberals have decided that opposing the revised Stage 3 tax cuts would be practically dumb and politically suicidal.
The ABC has presented an another analysis of how the Stage 1,2 and 3 tax cuts would affect the community.

The graph below can be changed as per percentage vs dollars and direct income.

View attachment 170277

This is the magic income set to win the biggest percentage tax cut from the revised plan

Confused about how much you'll actually be get across all three stages of the tax cuts? Exclusive new data reveals how much you need to earn to reap the biggest percentage return if the redesigned tax cuts are passed into law.

www.abc.net.au

That cannot be right Bas only the Coalition support the workers and their families

 

[basilio]

That cannot be right Bas only the Coalition support the workers and their families

Was something missing there IFocus ? Question mark ? Side eye ? Or was that simply assumed as given..

In the article I'm referencing below there was an observation from Allegra Spender who represents the seat of Wentworth - one of the wealthiest electorates in the country. Very decisive comments for Liberal Shadow Cabinet members.

Independent MP Allegra Spender also announced her decision to back the government's proposed tax cuts, in a sign of how the planned changes had been received in some of Australia's wealthier electorates.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02...ggest-tax-cut-from-stage-3-redesign/103428918
Ms Spender's vote was not needed for the changes to pass through the lower house, but her seat of Wentworth is one of the wealthiest electorates in the country, and Ms Spender said even there the cuts remained popular.

"My consultation with the Wentworth community has shown widespread support for the government's changes," Ms Spender said.

"Of the nearly 1,700 people who responded to our community survey, more than two-thirds backed the decision to reshape the tax cuts, including many people who will be worse off as a result.

"So many people have spoken to me about how they're struggling with cost of living pressures and these changes will give them support when they really need it."

Coalition to wave through stage 3 tax cut changes

The federal government's amended tax cuts will pass parliament without Labor needing to strike a deal with the Greens, with the Coalition deciding to support the cuts in a partyroom meeting.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Tisme]

Do the top tier earners actually pay tax or is that just me living in the past?

 

[Belli]

That cannot be right Bas only the Coalition support the workers and their families

I am extremely upset. I'm going to get a tax cut of only $4,500 instead of $9,000.

So unfair. I was relying on it to assist with buying this but now I have to dip even further into the pile of cash on hand.

 

[Gunnerguy]

With the stage 3 tax changes passed in parliament is anyone doing some nice TLH between them and their partner for FY 23/24 and 24/25 ?

I’ve done TLH for many years between me and my partner but it’s an absolute bonus with 19% changed to 16% and 32.5% changed to 30%. after July 1.

 

[Ferret]

TLH = tender loving hands?

 

[macca]

TLH = tender loving hands?

Tax loss harvesting?