May I contest the old economist shibboleth that tax reform should be revenue neutral. Rather than winners and losers in any tax reform, we can have winners and winners if the inefficiencies are taken out of the system, and motivation is restored. Treasury has steadfastly refused to not only model the spending tax proposal proposed in my book A Diet of 2% published in 1985, but they have not deigned to comment on the comprehensive economic model we carried out through Unisearch operating out of QUT in Queensland, where we dissected the Australian economy over two 3-year periods, tax by tax, sector by sector and state by state. See my second book, Your Future in Your hands. We proved a simple spending tax at only 2% (the broader the base, the lower the rate) could replace 9 major, inefficient and discriminatory profit based taxes with benefits across every sector. By funding government with a tax on the exchange of ownership of goods, services, property and labour (paper trail a simple invoice and receipt), the cost of government would be slashed by most of the huge churning taxes in the system, and by introducing the new system through a simplified BAS at 2% (no refunds, no exemptions, no demarcations, no penalties for success) and returning the excess taxes to the employer and maintain existing take-home pay at current levels, employers could do two things 1) reduce the cost of the goods and services they provide to increase the spending power of the take-home pay, and 2) employ more people. For some reason, Treasury chose to confuse this with a Bank Transactions tax - a demonstratively hopeless proposal. It is nothing of the sort. When will this proposal be openly and honestly debated at a proper tax summit?

John,

They could even fund tax reform by cutting down on wasteful spending. Now there is a novel idea for Labor.