En Passant

No doubt you will be shocked to learn, as I was, that it is the rich who overwhelmingly benefit from negative gearing losses, and the superannuation and capital gains discount tax concessions. Here are some facts.

Here are some pesky facts.

The top ten percent of income earners receive about one third of all the superannuation tax concessions, that is about $15 billion worth of tax expenditures annually. A couple in a similar position to the Arguses, if they stay within the rules, will get payments totaling $1.2 million per year tax free. Far better to slug poor and sick people between $5 and $20 to go to the doctor or put the GST on fresh food than to tax the rich eh Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey? So tell me again about the end of the age of entitlement.

I agree with Finance Minister Matthias Cormann. Taxing the rich and well off could easily address the Budget ’emergency’ and have enough left over to adequately fund better public health, public education and public transport as well as a move to a fully renewable energy society over the next decade.

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.

If we don’t fight we will lose. The 25000 who turned up to the May Day Rally in Brisbane on Sunday show the will to resist is there. They have seen the Abbott future. Its name is Campbell Newman. Now to turn the will to fight back into action. The union bureaucrats won’t do that. Most of them will gasbag for a little while and then surrender without any fight at all, without any strikes. That is why it is important for us to organise in our unions against Abbott’s attacks and for a better life.

This is an article of mine in the Canberra Times on Tuesday 12 February. I argue that the benefits of the superannuation tax concessions go disproportionately and overwhelmingly to the rich and that it’s time to end the super tax rorts.

A universal benefits scheme such as the age pension for all people over 65 and steeply progressive income tax rates and wealth and wealth transfer taxes are traditional left wing approaches to make the rich support the poor and less well off in society. It is time to tax the rich and that means getting rid of their tax rorts like superannuation tax concessions.

Tax the rich and business to pay for better public services for all Australians and to fully fund a totally renewable energy society by 2025.

The Treasurer has today been telling us the Minerals Resource Rent Tax is working precisely as it should – not raising any tax. The hospital in Yes Minister worked perfectly too – it didn’t have any patients.

Tax the rich? Nah, it would never be popular, would it, Labor? Just ask Francois Hollande, the man who could well be the next President of France precisely because he says he wants to tax the rich.