Thread: Federal deficit

Originally Posted by frantic

No its not.
A name is a perfect label. Change it from, mining tax to mining debt reduction and development fund tax. And it would be an easy sell to the vast majority.
A tax on companies that only kicks in when there making big profits and pays of debt and helps our future would be a far easier proposition than say increased tax on superannuation.

Why not a super tax on bank profits for example? That at least has the advantage of not discouraging investment in risky activities - and is justified by the government role in more or less guaranteeing low risk for them, and at least banks do not produce anything tangible. Perhaps this might discourage some of the banks' tendency to fleece their customers, since their excess profits would be taxed. Also less subject to legal challenge on the basis of states rights.

Of course there is the minor problem with any of these super tax ideas - the ultimate payee is most commonly your superannuation fund.

John

If you are going to have a tax on super profits, (definition please) it would/ should be equally applied to any Business. And why should individuals be exempt, be the be a Bank CEO or that specialist tradie doing FIFO to an Oil Rig.
Playing devils advocate here.

Meantime i have to do some paperwork to transfer my Company to Luxembourg, thats what happens when you squeeze too hard.

in my tiny mind, that is why a tax on any product purchased, exported or imported without exception and a tax on all funds, notes, liens etc etc leaving australia is by far the best way to proceed to my way of thinking.

the same for any and all products.

no income tax, no superannuation breaks or taxes.

no favors for the poor or rich, one rule for all.

in my mind where it would fall down is coming up with a formula to distribute it thru the states so the nation as a whole, functions and supports people and business....

Sorry, inc., you'll have to broaden your mind a little.
What has been happening, and will continue to happen, is overseas interests are buying farmland in Australia, farming product with nationals paid by the overseas company in their homeland and shipping the product to their home company for sale in their home country. Who then determines the value of their exports for taxation purposes? They have not been sold whilst in Australia?

Lots of detail to be worked out. You make it simple then a lot of smart people get around the system via loopholes that then require plugging, and so it goes on.

Oh, I loved Pauline Hanson's GST. 2% on every transaction. Non refundable. No paperwork in claiming inputs. Just works on all sales from manufacturer to wholesaler, 2%. From wholesaler to retailer, 2%. From retailer to customer, 2%.

Pauline had something there, but the tax accountants hated it, put them out of a job. I thought it was 0.2 % and included all financial transactions.

it was .2% and i wasn't game to mention it

The average punter is more involved in his own little world than the big picture. When it comes to money. The author of rich dad poor dad says a collapse in 2016 bring it on. How can you print money and it has no effect. If I did that I would go to jail.

I think this is a particularly relevant article given the way the "fairness" test is applied to everything.




Opinion: ?Fair? is thefour-letter word that's thwarting our politicians and holding us back

• by: Rowan Dean
• From: The Courier-Mail
• December 01, 2014 12:00AM

Before Gough Whitlam, ?fairness? related toopportunity; afterwards, it referred to outcome.Source: NewsLimited


IT?Sa four-letter word beginning with F and it's one of the most obscene words inthe Aussie vernacular. It's a selfish word used to demean the efforts ofothers, a word that covers up a lack of intellectual rigour, and a word used toobscure jealousy, envy and lies. It's the most politically correct word wehave. It's even in the title of our national anthem.


Theword is ?fair?; a word that's largely responsible for the self-imposedpolitical and economic mess in which we now find ourselves, where a governmentelected with a massive majority to bring our finances under control appears tobe too terrified to do so.


Why? Because the moment any attemptto remove or trim down our ludicrous freebies and entitlements is made, someonestarts yelling that it isn't ?fair?.


But what does ?fair? actuallymean?


In that far-away land that was Australia in the late-Menzies era, whenunemployment was considered out of control if it hit 1 per cent, thedescription of Australiaas a ?fair? country was pretty accurate. It meant fairness of opportunity.


If you couldn't afford to go touni but got top grades, the Commonwealth paid. (In 1966, nearly half the studentsat Australian unis were on merit-based scholarships.) If you were willing towork hard, have a go, get back up on your feet if you took a tumble and put inan honest day's work for an honest wage, Australia was the place for you toget on in life. And for a generation, a wave of determined European migrantseagerly grabbed that opportunity with both hands and didn't let go. Hell,before long they owned their own Holdens, homes and Hills Hoists. Some couldeven afford colour telly.


Then along came Whitlam'squasi-socialist revolution, and ?fair? took on a whole new meaning. Rather than?fairness of opportunity?, Whitlam subtly altered the meaning of ?fair? to?fairness of outcome?. Why, they even changed our national anthem just toemphasise the point: under Labor, Australia couldnow advance ? not through hard work, thrift and enterprise, but simply throughbeing ?fair?.


Everybody could have aworld-class university education (you didn't even need good grades any more);everybody could have a free world-class health system ? even if you couldafford to pay you didn't have to; and everybody could have a great lifestyle,even if they didn't really feel like getting up in the morning and going towork (pop into the dole office on the way to the surf).


It was all OK because 'mining?would pick up the tab. I remember one day at school during the Whitlam yearsbeing informed by an excited teacher that because of natural gas discoveries,every one of us would be a millionaire within 10 years. Pens down, kids, feet up!


The problem with ?fair? is it's asubjective adjective with no measurable definition. And that is why it appealsto politicians. Citing ?fairness? sounds great until you actually try to pindown the criteria. One person's fair is often another's undoing. If you remove?fair? from most politicians? arguments, you find there is little substancebehind what's left.


?Fair? is one of those words,like ?nice?, that should be banned from serious discourse. The biggest mistakeTony Abbott and Joe Hockey made in trying to sell their ill-fated Budget wasclaiming it would be ?fair?.


Fairness is a cynical word thatseeks to instill guilt in those who have been successful, productive members ofsociety (the very people responsible for the quality of public services thatthe less fortunate depend on), while instilling a sense of entitlement,injustice and grievance in those who ? like all human beings ? sometimesstruggle to achieve their goals.


Take the $7 medicare co-payment.While the left screech how ?unfair? it is, is it really ?fair? to lumber ourkids with a deteriorating quality of healthcare (as in Britain, whereyou can now only mention one symptom per visit to your GP)?


In Australia today, more than 50 percent of the population take more from the government than they give to it.Sounds fair? Of course not. It's an obscenity that is robbing the nextgeneration of any hope of living the lifestyles we've all enjoyed.


Australia's prosperity was built on enterprise, notentitlements. In politics, ?fair? is rarely fair dinkum.