En Passant

If Labor were serious about addressing the high price of housing and the impact this is having on both first home buyers and renters it would begin a program of state housing that addressed the needs of working class Australians. Such a program could be funded by taxing the rich capitalist class who benefit from having a well housed, rested working class. Labor won’t do that since it is wedded to the market and market ‘solutions’. That marriage explains its mickey mouse negative gearing proposals.

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.

When announcing that the Abbott government wouldn’t go ahead with the repeal of section 25-90, Hockey said they would introduce more targeted changes to address the issue. They abandoned even this pretence in Monday’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Evidently it would be impractical to go ahead with any changes. Impractical for whom Mr Hockey? Your rich and powerful tax avoiding mates.

I have a simple question for the Treasurer. Why don’t you tell us what the ATO thinks about section 25-90?

Joe Hockey is the best friend the big business tax avoiders have.

The one percent has captured not only Parliament and tax policy but tax administration now too. If that is true, the conclusion we might then reach is that the slaughter of Tax Office jobs currently under way is actually an attempt to administratively reduce taxes on capital by weakening the capacity of the ATO to tax the rich and powerful. Certainly that fits in neatly with the neoliberal cut taxes mantra of most politicians and the Treasury.

Over to you Commissioner of Taxation.

Let’s be clear here. Australia’s budget deficit is around ten percent of GDP, a very modest amount compared to other developed countries, and half of it a consequence of Abbott government decisions. Australia is a low tax and a low spending country. If we moved to the average tax rate of OECD countries we’d raise about an extra $100 billion a year. It is time not just to chant tax the rich but to mobilise around it as part of a wider push for socially progressive policies on jobs, the environment, indigenous Australians, asylum seekers, gays and lesbians, public health, public education, public transport, disability, pensions, child care and the like.

As a tax man I have been thinking about Kevin Rudd’s idea to cut company tax in the Northern Territory to 20%.

Let me tell you a story about profit shifting, or transfer pricing as it is known in tax circles.

Tax is also an ideological tool of capital. The propaganda of equity, undermined in fact by the reality of tax trends in Australia and around the globe, hides the reality both of tax inequality and the fundamental inequality that is capitalism, built as it is on the extraction of surplus value from workers by capital.

Enough of the charades Labor and the Liberals are playing over tax. Abolish the Goods and Services Tax and soak the rich till their pips squeak.

‘Mining Tax shortfall: the experts respond’ The Conversation 8 February 2013 ‘Current super concessions favour the wealthy – so why aren’t we supporting reform?” The Conversation 8 February 2013

To address the Gillard government possibly undermining Fringe Benefits Tax concessions for low paid female and male workers in the Not For Profit sector, maybe it’s time for a real industrial campaign to win massive pay increases and leave the tax fiddling to big business and the rich.