Why can’t we tax CO2‘s component parts separately?

2 x parts oxygen and 1 x part carbon.

It would be much more sellable as a tax at say $60 per ton if we rebated $40 per ton for the oxygen.

We would then be paying only $20 per ton. The government can then legitimately claim this oxygen rebate as an offset back to householders at $40 per ton for the oxygen.

The cumulative amount at $40 per ton is paid at the end of June each year which then increases your income by this amount and is taxed at the marginal rate (or reduces your pension or other Centrelink grants).

The tax collected is then given to polluters in the following tax year and increases their company earnings. We then apply the mining tax to miners and the CO2 tax to all other businesses. The Electricity Generators are charged the full carbon and oxygen tax (because we cannot separate the trace gas into its component parts). They pay the carbon component to the government as a carbon pollution tax but claim a rebate on the oxygen.

We retain 10% of the carbon pollution income so that our government can meet its obligations to the UN so that they in turn can pay the Indonesians to stop destroying their forests to grow the Palm Oil that Australia currently subsidizes them to produce.

They then become dependent on us for their food and we can increase the margins on food exports to cover the cost of oxygen rebates to Australians.

This all seems so simple compared with the complex system currently under review.

Any other suggestions

When Australians saw 45,000 people (not all at one event) we all knew since there was no carbon price yet, that this was another politically stage managed anti-conservative event.

Getup, the major organiser is a well know ALP sidekick, used as the arm's length "independent" stirrer. Gosh, so clever!

Those people had no idea what the price is, what a tax will do, who gets what, but they turned up to protest against "them", and we all saw it as that.

Not as Australians wanting to be taxed, or wanting "something done", we're not that stupid, but that's the problem Sophie is starting to latch on to, we don't believe you.

Hence, "reframing" the "protest", by trying to use the evil Australian Newspaper's own words, you know, connect with the morons through their own media. (ABC? Fairfax? they are no longer trusted to be objective)

Just on the note about how business operates .. it's so simple to people who haven't a clue isn't it "That makes common sense – send clear cost signals to businesses and they will respond. Easy."

Have you read the Companies Act? Go look at the ASIC site, they seem to think a Company Director's duty is to firstly look after shareholders and return them a profit. Not throw money away and reduce the profit.

Sophie, business is not easy, and your condescending attitude to it reflects your ignorance.

Companies will pass on whatever they get charged and retain profitability, or go out of business, it's as simple as that. Easy.

When do you go from Youth to Adult in the children's crusade?

It's going to be soon, because you're losing the gushy belief in the club and starting to realize, there may be more to this whole politics thing, that everyone is stupid except you.

I always wonder why there is not one big eco group, is it because there are so many eco group leaders, who all want to be important?

You and your cohorts have misunderstood the public, treated them as malleable fools, get out now, before it becomes a rout.