Tax in Australia

Export type production / manufacturing will significantly diminish but home gardens growing food will flourish as mono-cropping will slow down as money (US$) devalues and oil is too expensive to buy for farming, trucking and fertiliser...

A boon in self sufficiency, and independent living... America will have to return to its boom years of innovation, having a go, dynamism, so things could well be for the long term improvement...

 

I am a little lost.
I think I said we don't pay enough taxes here in the US. I think it was my concern.
And yes I think I make fun of you because you always come with a link of some sort. Not insult intended just to have a little fun.
Sorry about that, childish play.
But the rest is I find that taxes are important, everybody should share the burden of running their country.
It's a scilly and dreamy thinking, but it should be that way.
Cheers
Daniel

 

once i was talking to a guy that owned a small dump truck out fit with about 3-5 large dump trucks, most of his business was civil work for local, state and fed governments

well he was complaining about taxes, i just stood there thinking, you dumb sob

 

That reminds me of Ross Perot railing about government spending, and how entitlements are bleeding the country dry. He made his fortune on government contracts, computerizing and administering records for entitlements like Medicare.

 

or the midwest housing council that turned down stimulus funds that may have done low and medium income residents some good so they could remain ideologically pure while 3 of the 4 council members received fed farm subsidies

 

Not sure warrd , people thought computers were going to threaten jobs too , but instead , for people using them , their work load just increased .
What used to take maybe an hour now took 30 secs.The work place expectations were adjusted rather quickly.

 

Don't complain about Tax in Australia, it stopped me from living there.

Im not joking I would have to pay GST just to go live there.

In those days it was 100,000 to get a residence, I dont know what it is now, and Im English!!

After being there for a few months 7 years ago Im glad I don't live there.

No one wants to work, absenteeism is rife and laws protect them. Shopping arcades close on Sat afternoons at 3,59 like a prison lock up.

Miserable place with brown paper bag brigade lying around ATM machines, alcoholism being the most popular sport after dodging work.
Retired in Thailand instead.

If I'de have been a non English speaking unskilled Korean with a family then I would have been given assistance , maybe a house.

 

A lot of opinion from the left and from the right, mostly from the left but little about tax in Australia.

The idea that the "bad rich" must pay more because he is bad and rich, and the poor and virtuous worker less because he is poor and is virtuous is a very tired and unhealthy argument.
The reality is very different.

The person in Australia that earns
$13,000 a year pays 1092 in tax
$26000 = 4212
$65000 = 16744
$99840 = 32188

This punitive system of Robin Hood taxes, appears to help the poor by taxing the rich more, however the reality is very different.
The poor pays no taxes and remains poor so that he does not have to pay more taxes. Sad bat true and any welfare worker can confirm this fact.
The worker between 50 and 100k a year is the one paying almost all the personal tax yet can hardly be considered rich.
The one between 100k and 200k gets paid half the wages as employer's fringe benefits and salary sacrifice and so pays not tax over the average.
The one that earn 200,000 and more pay 30% flat rate tax because they corporatise their income and pay company tax that is fixed at 30%

So the idea that progressive tax rate alleviate the poor and tax the rich is a fallacy. The reality is that it creates a disincentive to progress up the income scale for the low income earner and an incentive to get into tax diversions for the higher income earner.

The ONLY fair tax is the FLAT RATE TAX. In Australia a revenue neutral tax where everyone pays the same rate would probably be around the 10/15% rate. This means that if everyone pays 10% of ALL their income, every dollar that you earn extra be it overtime of second job would go towards your progress and not in the tax coffers.

The funny part is that it is the left that opposes flat rate tax as a way to exploiting the poor

 

I don't believe anyone here has framed it as a moral issue. Not a single person has said the rich should pay more because they're evil, and the poor should pay less because they're virtuous.

The rich should pay the most because they're making the most money. They shouldn't be allowed to use accounting tricks and tax shelters to avoid it. That's common sense, not an attempt to portray them as "bad."

I kind of like the idea of a flat tax system myself, but I think it's kind of laughable to claim that a progressive system creates a "disincentive" to climb the ladder. I've never known a single person who said, "I don't want to be rich; I can't afford all those taxes...."

 

Yeah ....as if THATS going to happen.....

How much of the tax grab would our brave and fearless leaders have to
give up for that to become reality !

 

I think if anyone tried enact a flat tax system here, it would get destroyed in no time flat by competing special interests.

Advocates for the poor would say they need special breaks. Advocates for the rich would say they need write-offs for this, that and the other. There would be blood in the aisles of Congress over the definition of "income," and how to compute it.

It might make more sense to give up on income taxes altogether, and replace them with a flat sales tax on everything that moves. Buy a sandwich? Pay x% sales tax. Buy a house or a yacht? pay x% sales tax. No adjustments, no exemptions.

But that'll never happen, either.

 

Rich is evil and poor is virtuous is a universal concept that permeates every level of society, political, religious, cultural, kids stories or ancient legends.
Ask anyone if it is Ok for someone to earn 100,000 and you will get an an affirmative answer most of the time.
Say 300,000 and you will get many eyebrows rising, ask if it is ok for a person to earn 1 million a year and you will get repudiation most of the time. One million is obscene. Try ten millions and you will get stuff thrown at you...No one is worth that much a year or words to that effect.(note I did not say what this person does)
I use to ask this questions in seminars all the time and had similar replies over and over.

This are called anti values and are the one that shape people's income.
I don't want to be like the rich evil guy so I will not earn more than ....(place your own ceiling here)
Mind you none of this is at a conscious level.

As for taxes, progressive tax systems are in fact not progressive at all. Anyone that is on a salary in Australia and is offered overtime will quickly work out that HALF of his money will go to the taxman and will more often than not opt out and go fishing. Those on part welfare and low salaries lose part of their family allowance and fall in the higher tax bracket and also feel a high disincentive to work more for a lesser percentage of their gross pay. This is everyday stuff for any accountant and not opinion. The disincentive is from having to pay more tax than you are used to. Simple mathematics.

A flat tax system is fair and the one earning more will still be paying more, yet will pay the same percentage than the one earning less.
A person that earns 10,000 a year pays 10%= $1000 in tax
A person that makes $1,000,000 a year pays 10% = 100,000 tax
The problem is that as things are now, the one on 10,000 pays $500 and the one on 1,000,000 pays 500,000 and so he either sends his business off shore or makes a company and invoices his employer and so pays 300,000 plus can claim back a whole heap of expenses that are banned for employees. A flat tax system will make this procedure less cost effective and it would be easier to just pay a flat rate.

As for a transaction tax there was a proposal to apply a 2% transaction tax to everything every time and apparently according to some experts this would eliminate personal tax altogether. I am not sure if the calculations are ok nor in which country this was studied.

Yet both the flat tax or the transaction tax have an Aquiles heel. They appear to chastise the (virtuous) poor and to help the (evil) rich and for that they are political poison. However the fact remains that a symple flat and fair tax system is good for all involved.
The other argument from the left is that the person on lower salary if a consumer tax is applied, will have all his income taxed because he spends all, whilst the rich only spends part of it and therefore can save untaxed money.
The argument that not taxing savings will produce a boom in the availalbility of money for lending will probably be lost among the roar of the mob storming La Bastille.

 

You keep defending the rich when no one has attacked them, Marco. Why are you their apologist, when it isn't even necessary?
I agree a flat tax would be better, but not for the reasons you claim--that the system we have now punishes the rich. The opposite is true. I remember one year long ago, when I was in the Navy and Ronald Reagan was governor of California. I paid almost a third of my income in taxes, because I was single and poor, and had no investments to write off.

Reagan, on the other hand, paid nothing in income taxes that year, because of "losses" in his ranch and other investments.

My opinion is that if he was getting more money in his pocket to spend than I was, he had more real income--accounting games or no. And he shouldn't have been getting a free ride.

 

computers really haven't matured yet

 

I'm not sure what you are thinking, but automation (computers are merely an advanced form of automation) has already replaced over 3/4 of the original work forces. I would do the math for a closer number, which could be as high as 90% or more, but I'm lazy and I still haven't unpacked my history books.

Medieval eras saw well over 90% of the population directly involved in farming and direct life sustaining tasks. In Canada about 10% of the workforce is involved in all aspects of manufacturing, resource gathering (mining/lumber), farming, and fishing.

Why is this? Because we replaced men with better tools, meaning one man can now do the work for 100 men, freeing the rest to go do something else.

Automation is increasing, and one of the things that holds it back in some areas is actually politics rather than the ability of automation! Do you really think car plants need hundreds of workers to do something like lift a tire onto the car and bolt it in place? No! The job could be done far faster and more effective by a robot. Why is a human still doing it? Because that human needs a job so he can go buy a car, and political pressure is put on the owners of the plant to keep people working so the politicians don't get the boot for high unemployment rates.

Most of the costs of replacing many human jobs with a robot are artificial. Many are still of a technical nature due to robots just not being flexible enough in their abilities and lacking proper reasoning and 'skill' to preform a task, but there are few tasks out there that have not been demonstrated as doable by a robotic replacement worker. Robots are still 'expensive' because too many humans still work along the development net for them: Miners to gather materials, mill workers to refine stuff, factory workers to assemble components. However as more and more robots replace jobs in those fields used to make robots, then their price begins to drop to that of the cost of the energy used to produce all the elements along the line to make replacement robots.


Robots are the future, we just have to figure out what to do when they take all our jobs. (I for one am going into computer sciences with robotic engineering on the side.)