May 13th, 2008
Budget to launch wide tax system review
A comprehensive review of Australia’s tax system will be unveiled with Tuesday’s federal budget - but the GST and tax-free superannuation will be off-limits.
Treasurer Wayne Swan said it was time for a sweeping inquiry into state, federal and local government taxes across the nation, including the potential impact of a carbon emissions trading scheme.
Treasury secretary Ken Henry will head the review, assisted by academics, former tax officials and industry figures.
Mr Swan, who is preparing to hand down the first federal Labor budget in 13 years, said the tax system needed to be more efficient and internationally competitive.
“We think a modern economy needs a modern tax system,” Mr Swan told the Nine Network.
“A modern tax system needs to be efficient, it needs to be internationally competitive. It certainly also needs to be fair, it needs to ensure that everybody pays their fair share, and it needs to be simpler.”
But the government has already ruled out broadening the base of the GST or lifting the rate, and has promised to keep tax-free superannuation.
Mr Swan’s announcement came as he confirmed that he would be lifting the tax on luxury cars priced at more than $57,000 from 25 per cent to 33 per cent in the budget.
The government has already announced a 70 per cent increase in the tax on ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages, reaping an extra $2 billion in revenue.
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner denied that Labor was heading towards a big-taxing government.
The budget would contain substantial personal tax cuts, as well as an education tax credit and childcare tax rebates, he said.
“All of these things will actually reduce the tax burden, in effect, because it’s giving people money back on their tax,” Mr Tanner said.
“We’re trying to relieve the pressure on inflation, trying to take a bit of the froth off demand, and it’s better to do that at the upper end of the income scales than to hit the battlers, the low-income working people.”
Tags: budget, federal
6 Responses to “Budget to launch wide tax system review”
Directly, this was in response to the recent post of a chart of only Discretionary spending. I’ve long felt that that was a big, fat lie.You can argue that Defense, Veterans Benefits, the special Iraq war spending, and maybe even Homeland Security should all count as War spending. Go get the numbers from http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy08/pdf/budget/tables.pdf and make your own charts. Two caveats: these are only requested #s, the amounts actually funded may change, and as has been said, some spending the feds do is “off budget”. Because Congress can’t help lying, I suppose.I’m just happy I got to the front page.
Actually I believe it’s in there, buried under “defense” and perhaps some under “foreign affairs” if it’s funded by the State department. They could hide spending as you suggest, but then they’d have to pay for it with hidden taxes, which don’t exist as far as I know.Wait a minute, I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas… Pretty soon we’ll start getting National Security Letters ordering us to pay extra taxes without telling anyone!
Minnesota once made a java application where you could play government and make a budget. This turns out to be really hard to do. I have no idea where that app is today.
Wow, no wonder you guys are *****.
What the hell do they really need to spend several hundred million dollars on in the white house each year? I could have a few million dollars and never get through that.