She’s won two elections of about six she’s contested, despite her huge profile.
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Hanson won all of her elections, because she knew she just needed to get a certain percent of the votes to make decent money out of it.
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Not sure what you are saying, but HAP is correct, Hanson has lost more elections that she won, but you are correct that in every election, she got more than the magical 5% and was paid about $3 for every vote direct to her slimy pocket.
This equates to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No free lunches so why are we feeding foreign multinationals’ profits?
By Ross Gittins
24 March 2018
Most people don’t realise it, but we’re on the verge of letting foreign multinationals pay less tax on the profits they earn in Australia because we locals don’t mind paying higher tax to make up the difference.
Our almost unique system of “imputing” to Australian shareholders the company tax already paid on their dividends means they have little to gain from Malcolm Turnbull’s pressure on the Senate to phase the rate of company tax down from 30 per cent to 25 per cent, over about 10 years, at a cumulative cost to the budget of $65 billion.
So what can we hope to obtain in return for our generosity to foreign businesses? Economic theory (which may or may not prove realistic) assumes it would induce them to increase their investment in Australia which, in turn, would increase the demand for Australian workers relative to their supply, thus bidding up their price (otherwise known as wages).
Note that, contrary to all Turnbull’s said about his “plan for jobs and growth”, the theory does not promise a significant increase in employment – mainly because the theory assumes the economy is already at full employment before the company tax rate is cut.
As my colleague Peter Martin has written, Treasury’s updating of its modelling of the theory finds that, after 10 to 20 years, consumer welfare (arising mainly from higher wages) would be $150 per person higher than it otherwise would be.
Doesn’t seem a lot.
Apart from the initial benefits of the company tax cut going pretty much only to foreigners, another reason Treasury’s modelling has always shown the ultimate benefits to us as being surprisingly small is Treasury’s further assumption that the budgetary cost of the cut would have to be covered by some means.
Treasury’s consultant modelled several possibilities: by cutting government spending (don’t hold your breath), imposing a lump-sum tax (a textbook fav), increasing the goods and services tax, or by letting bracket creep quietly increase income tax (the most likely).
.
Trouble is, the model’s assumption that increased taxes would harm the economy’s performance diminishes the good the lower company tax is assumed to do. As Milton Friedman liked to say, there are no free lunches (you’ll end up having to pay, one way or another).
So the impression the government and big business are trying to give us (and naive crossbench senators), that only an economic wrecker would oppose a lower company tax rate, is just spin.
As always, every possible economic policy change has costs as well as benefits, which should be debated. I think the case for cutting company taxes is weak.
With the government taking such a propagandist line, the most dispassionate advice we’ve received has come from evidence Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe, and an assistant governor, Dr Luci Ellis, gave to a parliamentary committee last year.
Bidding war
Lowe pointed out something no other official has mentioned: the main countries are engaged in a bidding war, in which each moves to a lower company tax rate than the others, hoping to pick up a bigger share of the world’s foreign investment - before some other country cuts to an even lower rate.
You can imagine how much the world’s chief executives love this game and are urging their own government to put in the lowest, supposedly winning, bid.
But the longer everyone keeps playing, the closer we’ll come to the point where no country has any company tax to speak of – and no country has any competitive advantage over the others. All we’ll be left with is a distorted tax system.
Lowe’s point was that we should think twice before we join this mutually destructive game. Why would a tax war be good, whereas a trade war would be terrible?
The proponents’ latest argument is that, now the US is cutting its company tax rate to 21 per cent, we’ll get little foreign investment if we don’t cut our rate from 30 per cent.
What no one seems to have noticed is that the case for a company tax cut has now turned from positive to negative. It’s not that we’ll gain anything by cutting, but just that we’ll avoid losing if we don’t.
But you don’t have to accept that argument if you don’t want to. Behavioural economics reminds us that the proponents have “framed” our choices in a way that favours their case.
Treasury should stop worrying
They want us to accept without thinking that foreign companies make their decisions about whether or not to invest in Oz solely by comparing the rate of our company tax with other countries’ rates.
That is, foreigners take no account of how our special tax breaks compare with other countries’ tax breaks, nor any non-tax factors that make investing in Oz attractive (say, we’ve got better iron ore than everyone else) nor even that they don’t have to worry about our taxes because their lawyers know how to avoid paying them.
As Lowe and Ellis explained to the parliamentary committee, the notion that multinationals focus solely on the rate of our tax is highly implausible.
I think all those other factors mean we’re unlikely to attract insufficient foreign investment, even though the US has cut to 21 per cent.
But Treasury’s been a great worrier about us attracting enough foreign investment for as long as I’ve been in the game, without there ever being much sign of a problem.
So, what’s eating Treasury? My theory is that it hasn’t adjusted its thinking since we moved from a fixed to a floating exchange rate in 1983.
COMPANY TAX
Government rejects Hinch plan to exempt banks from company tax cuts
What the proponents of a lower company tax rate don’t tell you is that, with a floating dollar (and all else remaining equal), the more successful we are in attracting foreign investment – as we were in the resources boom - the higher our exchange rate will be. Is that what we want?
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Ross Gittins. Fkn socialist!
Yep farking National Socialist, his middle name is Adolf.
This is my prediction, company tax cuts go through, peasants get small tax break, LNP win next election, GST goes up completely rendering the peasants tax cut farmed.
Farked
I don’t understand why the Tories want to cut company taxes when multinationals don’t pay any tax here anyway.
They should be putting in a tax on gross earnings, like the EU is planning. Now, that would fix the budget. Imagine if we started getting some tax dollars from all these multinationals.
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It’s regressive taxation policies like this that really angers me. Yet no-one gives a ■■■■. If people were just as outraged at this as they are with the Oz cricket team tampering with a ■■■■■■ cricket ball we’d be well on the way to a more equal nation.
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The Tories are interested in fixing the budget? I thought that’s just what they told the baby boomers.
Take a look at your tax return. Contrary to the law against double taxation, you will see that they brought in an extra tax they impose on top of our normal tax, and called it the “deficit reduction levy”
That shows they must be serious!
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Is that the one with the footnote “extra slush for funding our donors”?
Some interesting takes on ‘government benefits’ on this board
The very concerning thing about Australia’s future is that a f*ckwit such as Dutton is very likely to be voted in as Prime Minister of Australia.
Politicians like Dutton are the reason I do not want a President of Australia, because Of the power such a person can wield.
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Likely??? Only if the Libs are prepared to sacrifice the next 2 elections.
I wouldn’t call him a f*ckwit…rather a deadset Rex Hunt.
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That’s not double taxation, just an increased amount of tax payable but under a specific label, just as the Medicare Levy is.
Sorry, but who ■■■■■■■ cares if it is or it isn’t?
I shouldn’t pay tax on income earned because a company already wrote it off as a loss from some bullshit accountancy trick?
While we pay tax on interest earned?
Oh, because you and they are ‘smart’?
■■■■ them and ■■■■ you too.
Pay your ■■■■■■■ taxes.
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With a ■■■■■■■ tax is it pay as you go or do you do all your deposits at once?
Sorry, not sorry.
Company tax is levied on nett profit, and to your employer your salary is a legal deduction off the gross income to get to a nett profit or loss. Income on interest for a Company also goes into the gross income figure.
It is the contrived deductions that you should be cranky about, because PAYG salary earners don’t get the same benefits as some-one who owns a business.
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