If you've ever run a small business, you know to the cent, what your operating budget by end of every day!
If you've managed a large enterprise, [many have bigger budgets than many sovereign nations,] you will know month on month, what your true, (credit debit ledger) financial position is.
If Australia were a corporation run by competent managers, instead of "politicians", (some of who would be challenged trying to run a chook raffle) welded to a flawed system that might have served a feudal monarchy?
And since has had layer upon layer of complexity added to it, is totally unsuitable for a modern economy!
If we were sane, we would simply jettison a system which serves nobody, except say, serial tax avoiders.
If we jettisoned the current convoluted system we call our tax act, and there's no practical reason we can't, just endless excuses and Ideology, we'd be able to usher in a vastly more logical system! (Can't died in a cornfield over a hundred years ago)
A simple stand alone expenditure tax that treated every dollar of expenditure equally, would serve all our interests far better than the current system.
Those that actually pay their fair share of tax will pay less, as the current avoiders are finally included in the net! The funds would be transparently available as soon as they were collected!
We are told, around 40% of our international guest corporations, (some with trillion dollar budgets) pay no company tax to anyone, thanks to vagaries of the global economy; and or, illogical absurdities like the 1953 double tax act!
An act which allows some entities to avoid paying ours or their tax!?
Yes there could be some losers, but only if we were too dumb to also create a brand new people's bank at the same time, as somewhere to park the new and endless surpluses, we would create with this simplicity.
I was once told the mark of true genius was the ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions. Simple solutions are always best, with the least able to go wrong!
Rhrosty

If you've ever run a business, you know for a fact, you can't ever estimate what income you will receive tomorrow, let alone this time years from now.
The are just too many unknown knowns, and even more known unknowns.
You can create a graph and then project a trend line based on current variables.
All of which fly out the door, with things like the GFC, or the dumb activities, of the American tea party, who now threaten the entire global economy, with a great depression; as they try to hold the the American govt budget to ransom.
If only all politicians weren't protected from most of the consequences of their often asinine decisions!?
Budget transparency would improve beyond belief, if were simply limited to today's income realities.
Which could then be moderated, with more tax/ended avoidance and the end of entirely unnecessary entitlements etc!
In which case we could begin to build a sovereign fund, to offset budget shortfalls at times like this.
Which would be a vastly superior result to the endless and constant use of the credit card.
Credit would be okay, if there were an upper limit, we couldn't ever traverse; and, if we could simply borrow from ourselves, via a brand new peoples' bank.
We need to finally learn to live within our means.
And that means we must means test every govt service or entitlement, all of which need to reflect the new budget realities! No ifs, buts or maybes, or special exclusions.
[One could imagine that the Americans could finally begin to live within their means and draw down debt, if they simply jettisoned the farm bill, and equalized personal tax liabilities on the percentile, rather than the number of dollars earned?
All tax breaks could then be given via an increased threshold!]
Were we to create and then borrow inside a realistic income based upper limit, from a brand new people' bank? We alone would benefit as we paid ourselves back, along with any and all appropriate interest, fees and charges!
Rhrosty.

All tax breaks could then be given via an increased threshold!
Rhosty,
Yes, it's those tax thresholds that are the cause of so much economic woe here. The top-end Public service rates are nothing short of either insane or criminal. The other economic trap is the notion of qualification along with government approved incompetence is worth the money we pay instead of the competence that returns us money.
I'm confident the Abbott Government will clamp down on the insanity & corruption that is our public service echelon.