So the Tax Forum is done and dusted. Was it simply a talk-fest? Or a useful exchange of ideas? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you missed anything, don’t despair: we’ve collected some of…
Periodic tax reform is necessary as governments respond to new patterns and forms of economic activity and the inevitable political pressures these changes create. Yet the politics of tax reform is politically…
What can we expect from the Tax Forum at Parliament House today and tomorrow? We may anticipate consensus that the tax system should be efficient, fair, understandable and effective in raising the revenue…
There is a contradiction at the heart of tax reform. Timid governments, worried about a voter backlash, do too little, too late. Yet in the medium to long term, major structural changes in the economy…
It is a shame that the GST is off the menu at October’s Tax Forum, because one of its central tenets – the exemption of basic food and beverages – deserves to be debated again. The exemption is basically…
The billionaires, business leaders and other elites who gathered in Davos praised the president’s policies, yet research on the politics of economic growth suggests it’s too soon to celebrate.
The Federal government’s Tax Forum offers a unique opportunity to begin remedying some of the inefficiencies and inequities we are witnessing in our housing system. Housing in Australia has become an unaffordable…
Almost 50 cents of every dollar spent by governments in Australia goes on social spending - either social security or health and community services. This week’s tax forum must reform the system, as the…
While changes to the GST are not an explicit item on the Tax Forum agenda, they should be and the issue will arise anyway. A broad and comprehensive GST tax base along the lines of the New Zealand model…
Mesa, Arizona: a place with wide streets and narrow minds. Or so goes a once popular saying about this traditionally laid-back, conservative community that came into official existence in 1883 as a Mormon…
