Here's the rub, the most any company paid in actual dollars in tax last year was just 17%. With one in three paying none at all for up to three years!

With many companies recording record profit on record profit!

This government seems all about serving the needs or wishes of debt laden, tax avoiding, price gouging, profit repatriating foreigners? All while the mugs out there in mugsville pay and pay and pay! For less and less and less.

Housing unaffordable except for negatively geared landlords or for kids with parents so well heeled they can buy them a house, even as the energy crisis just deepens and is patently driving industries and jobs offshore.

Were this government governing for joe average Australian, things would be very different. We'd already have nuclear power. not just any nuclear but molten salt thorium and energy price where the median was just 2 cents PKH.

And there'd be genuine tax reform for all, not privileged foreigners. And would look like a flat tax of just 15% and unavoidable. With the one in three currently avoiding paying any, finally paying the same as the rest of us!

The effect of just making it unavoidable, with no exclusion or quarantines, would make a complete nonsense out of reconciliation and other costly tax compliance schemes.

Which instead would become completely null and void, and allow those tax compliance costs (7% av) to be returned to the bottom line. Making the effective tax rate just 8%. And if any bona fide business couldn't pay that, hardly viable?

Moreover, its just income/profits that are taxed, so forget the outraged screams as the crooks and con artists finally get their comeuppance! Mr trump would just love it!?
Alan B.

It's all very well to sympathise with Bob and his wait for surgery, but why hasn't he got health insurance that would see him into a private hospital within a week? Forget about continuing to blame the long-gone Abbott, and think about what Bob could have done to look after himself, and not be reliant on other people's money to look after HIS health.

Before I go any further, I have to say that I'm one of those “ 330,000 pensioners (who)have seen a cut to their age pension following changes to the pension assets test”, so I'm not some fat cat looking to grind the proletariat into the ground. But I do have my priorities right, and I do have private health cover.

Before we listen to socialist politicians' sob stories (Matt Thistlethwaithe is the Labor member for Kingsford Smith) we have to remember that they are big government spenders of other peoples' money, and their 'business model' entails having the plebs reliant on them: the more they give you, the more control they have over you. And they don't tell you whether people like Bob are relying on the public system because of circumstances beyond their control, or they are because they have the wrong priorities for spending their money.

But Bob hasn't a lot to do with the theme of this article. Needing hip replacements he would not be a particular victim of proposed cuts to company tax. Giving money to business via tax cuts will not make living any costlier for Bob or the rest of us who no longer work. The government is talking about tax cuts as way to increase employment, and this is, of course, a ridiculous notion. If business needed to employ more people they would be doing it now, tax cuts or not. There are simply not enough jobs to go around in Australia, and tax cuts to employers will not disguise the fact that there are too many people in this country for the jobs available. A cessation of mass immigration is what is needed.

Like it or not it is very difficult to get away without private health cover. Unless, of course, you are either extremely healthy or extremely wealthy.
You won`t make money out of having it and certainly won`t break even but it will cost a lot more without it.

Funny isn't it. Trumps tax cuts have led to greatly reduced unemployment, & the first real wage increases in the US in almost a decade. I wonder why Thistlethwaite expects them to do something different here.

Then he appears to have trouble distinguishing between revenue & profits. No he doesn't you say, so he is just hoping the reader is too dumb to notice, & he will get away with telling lies by inference.

God no wonder that we would prefer an honest adulterer, than a totally dishonest socialists.

From what I understand, the tax burden has fallen to middle income earners as taxation revenue from company tax and high net worth individuals has fallen.

If we look at our politicians,they enjoy the ability to salary package, many have family trusts, more than a few negatively gear their property portfolios.

Some retired politicians like our former Treasurer, is not only receiving his generous taxpayer funded superannuation, but he is also being employed as an ambassador.

When it comes to health care, there are three ways of funding it.

The first is in many countries, there is no insurance or government funded health care so the individual has to fund it some how, generally by selling assests, like their house or business.

The second and third are variations of each other.

Private health insurance, collect money from many policy holders where it is then put into a pool and hopefully nobody makes a claim, but given that a hip replacement can cost upto a 100k or more if there are complications, that 100k is definitely more than what a individual would have paid in premiums.

However to make Private Health insurance profitable there are exclusions such as hip replacements, cardiac surgery, dialysis etc.

The United States Private Health insurance companies deny around 10% of claims.

Government funded health care is where it is funded through taxation so everybody pays. Rather strangely it is classified at free, even though every one contributes through taxation. Just like the Private Health insurance where all people who are policy holders are covered.

Wages growth is driven by a demand for labour. With the unemployment at nearly 6% as left by labor, there is more supply than demand and employers can get away with minimal increases. When unemployment drops as it is beginning to do now, it becomes harder to fill vacancies and so higher wages are paid. Cutting company tax makes investing more profitable and so more jobs are created which in turn increase wages.

The benefits to the budget are more taxpayers and less people on welfare. Carefully managed this leads to no net change to the budget.