Aidan: you keep on saying an unavoidable expenditure tax is avoidable?

Repetition of risible rhetoric just doesn't make your more obtuse statement true.

However Given you are so smart, maybe you can enlighten the Rubes on how this is done?

For mine that leaves just the cash economy and keeping your income under the mattress, or in the safe. And an invitation to armed robbers?

And given that strategy allows you to beat the system for a while, what happens if you are robbed; or you need to pass some means test to use taxpayer funded facilities, always remembering, a false declaration is fraud, which could and should result in some hard prison time or permanent exile/deportation!

And suppose there was a substantial reward offered for exposing such fraud, why would anybody with a still functioning cerebral cortex want to avoid a tiny tobin tax just to avoid fair and reasonable personal liability? Well?
Rhrosty.

Rhosty, one big hole in your credit card for business use theory, most suppliers now charge a cc fee, usually between 1 and 3 %, and that's on invoice value. 730% interest in other words.

As for negative gearing, there are few winners and potentially multiple loosers, a few being.
Banks may tighten their lending criteria and not allow re draws.
The reason they may tighten lending will be due to the lack of buyers in the used market, and they will be reluctant to allow redraws due to new market uncertainty.
This will have a huge knock on effect as many today fund their lifestyles from equity in their homes. While I don't support the practice, it is a huge stimulator of our economy.
Another is multiple dwelling complexes, which are an effective tool in the fight against affordable housing shortfalls. The common situation where one older home turns into multiple new dwellings.
Investors/developers will shy away from these developments simply because they will have to service the debt through DA and construction with after tax dollars. That simply wont happen, at least not to the stage we need or currently have. Then what!
Lastly, rents will skyrocket, one due to demand outweighing supply, as those who often rent their first home out, to buy their dream home, taking advantage of NG will more than likely either trey to sell their old home in a deflated market, resulting in one less new home and one less rental.

This is a very dangerous game both sides are playing.

As for governments finding pensions, workers fund their own pensions through income tax, its just that governments don't save it as they should, they waste it or give to someone else, ie, illegals.

What I do agree with you on Rhosty is the expenditure flat tax. I cant understand why someone is not at least running the numbers on it.

As for those who say its avoidable, the truth is the amount that would go into such black markets wouldn't even register in the big picture.

I pay about $450 a week in income tax alone, so to have over $400 of that back each week sure would be handy. But no one will go there, it appears to be a 'taboo' subject, which I find rather strange considering everything is on the table.

Both sides of politics are playing a very dangerous game interfering in the property market.

That is particularly so where there are pundits constantly painting a very dim picture of the Australian property market as 'unsupportable', there is a claimed 'housing bubble' and 'the GFC has never left, but is looming like a black cloud'.

Shorten is playing politics and ignoring the high risks and abysmal returns (and of course often negative), of buying, managing and maintaining a rental property.

It is the leftist Class War against those despised 'wealthy', greedy landlords. Treat them all as speculators trading houses and making millions. That is the same spin and fraud of the 'get-rich-quick-from-property-investment' spruikers and their training courses and conferences.

It is a very regrettable that the focus is on finding new and increased taxes to fund Shorten's political promises for increased spending.

The Rudd and Galah'd(+treacherous Greens) governments spent up big and planned to reinstate Death Duties and Capital Gains Tax on the family home. Those taxes are still in the top drawer, waiting and not forgotten by the leftists.

Beach, I have no problem with death duties if the asset has been acquired through the use of tax payer assistance, eg, negative gearing. Surely if the asset has enjoyed tax payers support, the tax payers are entitled to have their day once the owner, the beneficiary of that gift, has passed.

By all means leave the family owned home alone, but businesses (which include rental homes that have been negatively geared) and farms that have claimed losses are fair game.

Both sides of politics are leading us toward disaster because make no mistake, labors policy especially will have a huge negative impact on used properties and make it so much harder for first home buyers to secure their dreams.

Peter Costello once said that we need a complex tax system because we live in a complex society. I believe that the complexites of our modern society are mainly the result of an overly complex tax system.

Consider all the advantages of a flat tax, say at 30% initially, with a dole of, say, $12,000 for every adult Australian, with ALL income taxed at the same rate - i.e. no loopholes.

1. Most people, whose only income is from wages, would have tax deducted as they do now, and need have no involvement with the ATO. The only contact needed is when otherwise untaxed income is made.

2. Centrelink would be vastly smaller, with very few needing extra help.

3. The ATO would be similarly diminished in size.

4. We would have no need of tax consultants, when the only way to reduce one's tax would be to reduce one's income. We spend years training these lawyers and accountants to do what is essentially an evil profession, looking for loopholes for fat-cats. We could train more engineers, doctors, and teachers.

5. Tax on an income of $40,000 would exactly balance the dole; at an income of $80,000 one would be effectively paying %15 tax, and at $160,000 the effective tax would be only %22.5. (In these examples, the marginal rate is %30, with an allowance of $12,000).

6. No "bracket creep". No shifting income to your children as the tax is the same. No negative gearing, or any other way of reducing income. No capital gains deduction. At death, one still owes capital gains tax, etc