En Passant

This is an abstract I have drafted for a paper on tax, war, democracy and revolution. It is early days yet – I have just started doing the research – and the Conference is six months away so I hope to be finished before then. The history is necessarily truncated, and so will be a potted history.

Each area of examination deserves its own much deeper and thorough analysis but that would lose the sweep of history I am trying to capture. And I only have about 30,0000 words. It will be an important part of my PHD. I would be grateful for any suggestions, thoughts, comments, especially about useful works on the various areas mentioned in the abstract below I am looking at.

This article, Cleaning the Muck of Ages from the Windows into the Soul of Income Tax, will be published in Volume 5 Issue 1 Spring 2016 British Journal of American Legal Studies. It is available through SSRN in pre-publication draft form. Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into […]

Given that both Joe Hockey and Chris Jordan are possibly undermining the work of the Senate and this committee by not providing the names of the tax rorters, and supporting that decision, the question has to be asked: Are the Treasurer and the Commissioner of Taxation in contempt of the Senate and the Committee? If so, why aren’t their actions being investigated with a view to prosecution?

Given the widespread opposition to the 2014 Budget, the one percent have drawn an important lesson from that debacle – consult with the intended victims before launching attacks on poor people and workers. That is what the tax discussion paper is about. This Damascene conversion to talking to people begs the question – is a tax shit sandwich no longer a shit sandwich if it has consultation sprinkles on top? To ask the question is to answer it. The solution to the tax and budgetary dilemmas seems pretty clear. Tax the rich.

Private company owners told the Abbott government they feared being kidnapped if the public knew how much their private companies were worth and their income. The government fell for it. What nonsense. If you believe this kidnap crap, I have a bridge in Sydney I would like to sell you too.

Labor’s tax avoidance crack down statement was the old pea and thimble trick. It wants to give the impression of doing something about big business tax avoidance (always a popular issue among ordinary workers) without really frightening the big business horses. Pathetic is the word that comes to mind.

The next time the Treasurer tells you he has to cut pensions, aboriginal services, women’s refuges, health or education funding, ask him why he doesn’t shut down the section 25-90 rort and use the $600 million a year on something socially useful. What about it Mr Hockey? This of course is the same Mr Hockey happy to see Chris Jordan, the former NSW manager of major tax avoidance ‘planning’ firm, KPMG, and current Commissioner of Taxation, destroy the Australian Tax Office and its already meagre capacity to police the rich and powerful tax avoiders and evaders. Regulatory capture is the word I think we are searching for here, Mr Hockey.

Tristan Ewins has written a piece called “Debate on tax and ‘small government’ flares again” in the ALP Socialist Left Forum, with a revised version in Online Opinion. In it he makes some sensible suggestions about tax re-jigging that could raise tens of billions from the rich and powerful although much more could be added to the program such as a net wealth tax on the top ten percent without impacting at all on the capital accumulation process. It is worth a read.

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into Marx’s methods as a first step to understanding income tax more generally but with specific reference to Australia’s income tax system. I do this by introducing readers to the ideas about the totality that is capitalism, appearance and form, and the dialectic in Marx’s hands. This will involve looking at income tax as part of the bigger pi…cture of capitalism, and understanding that all things are related and changes in one produce changes in all. Appearances can be deceptive and we need to delve below the surface to understand the reality or essence of income and, hence, of income tax. Dialectics is the study of change. By developing an understanding of the processes of contradiction and change in society, the totality, we can then start to understand income tax and its role in our current society more deeply. To do that, we need to understand the ways of thinking and approaches that Marx and others have employed. Only then, armed with the tools we have discovered, can we begin the process of cleaning the muck of ages from the windows into the soul of tax and move from the world of appearance to the essence of tax.

The outcome of neoliberal policy since 1983, when Hawke Labor began implementing it and laid out the red carpet for Howard and then Abbott, has been a massive shift in wealth in Australia from labour to capital. The process of neoliberal regulatory capture in tax policy and tax law has now, if Second Commissioner Mills’ speech is any indication, also successfully infected the administration of the Australian Tax Office. All the sweet words in the world will not disguise the fact that the fox is now in charge of the revenue hen house.