Paul Keating is far from wrong, given no corporate entity actually pays anything like 33% company tax,with company tax varying between 1-4% And then 40% paying no company tax to anyone? As always we are treated like mushrooms on this subject, while our alleged leaders go into meltdown arguing for and against lower tax rates.

Time to end this rhetorical rubbish and do something real! Like instituting an unavoidable scheme that nobody who earns profit in Australia escapes!

And that rate is a flat rate tax of 15% PAYG. Which given there is no point trying to massage the profit and loss figures or send the same sum of money chasing its tail through several subsidiaries.

Means, all tax compliance is resolved in the affirmative and tax compliance costs completely negated! Thus returning the averaged 7% former tax compliance costs, back to the bottom line!

Meaning the adjusted mean average would be an averaged 8% Or double the max most companies actual pay and billions more from the 40% of multinationals who currently pay no company tax whatsoever to anyone.

We have just made a bad situation worse by just trying to keep the tax collection/readjustment industry alive and well. When it and our increasing complex rules and regulations are the real problem and designed with inherent flaws!

A simple flat tax that nobody can sidestep or avoid for any reason whatsoever, will make all the avoidance schemes and offshoring significantly more expensive than just paying our unavoidable company tax/personal tax, as the only tax we need to collect, minus the usual refunds and cost adding money churning!

Therefore, able to abolish (rerouted) fuel excise, the ubiquitous and cascading GST, plus stamp duties which should be made illegal along with regressive payroll tax. A very wise Republican Senator, appearing on our Q+A said, at some point, complexity always becomes fraud. Quote unquote.
Alan B.

So long as ordinary people have to pay tax, company tax should rather be increased, to match the tax which its individual company-owners have to pay.

One way is to deem all undistributed profits, at the end of each financial year as the share-holders' income, then work out the company-tax as the sum of the extra taxes that would have been incurred by those holders. Companies would then have the discretion whether and when to return the after-tax amounts to their share-holders, or to reinvest them.

When the share-holder is an individual, the tax would be worked out according to their marginal rates. When the share-holder is a superannuation fund, the tax would only be 15% (or 0% in pension-phase), but the tax on completely foreign-owned companies would start at 32.5%, similar to what their non-resident owners would pay in tax.

Taxing foreign companies will help to chase them away and keep Australia self-sufficient in the troubled days to come.

The case for cutting company tax rate further is EXTREMELY WEAK. For while it is true that company tax is a disincentive to business investment, there are other much bigger disincentives such as interest rates. While the government provides an interest disincentive to invest, the value of cutting the tax disincentive to invest is precisely zero.

GST is far more harmful to the economy. Until that's abolished we should not cut company tax rates any further.

By paying to overseas holding companies (or their tax haven subsidiaries) royalties on software and other intellectual property and lending capital (subject to only a 10% retention tax on interest) rather than investing in equity ( to limits set by thin capitalisation rules) overseas companies already substantially average down the tax they pay on profits made in Australia.
As far as Australian shareholders are concerned company tax is nil on profits paid out as dividends. At a retention rate of 50% a 30% tax rate, as far as Australian residents are concerned, averages down to 15%
Quite clearly :-dividend imputation credits are the elephant in the room and comparison of company tax of countries without imputation credits with those with them are quite erroneous.

We have a huge pool of investment funds in our compulsory superannuation structure. We can make ourselves far less dependent on overseas credit by limiting tax benefits of superannuation funds to those that restrict their investment to Australia.

Any form of company tax reduction should be in the form of a deduction from taxable income of an amount calculated at the RBA rate on paid up capital. This would encourage at risk equity investment rather than risky borrowing which creates losses for innocent creditors such as employees whose entitlements go unpaid on liquidation so often.

On this last point:- employee entitlements should be paid into a trust account as they arise and be tax deductible accordingly with substantial shortfalls penalised the a solicitor with deficient trust account is penalised- disbarred and gaoled.

The double tax act of 1953, currently works against us and for our offshore competition.

A simple transparent 15% flat PAYG/PAYE tax, does the opposite and be a cost, able to be used in other jurisdictions, as write offs! As opposed to the opposite?

Our competition, friendly or hostile, just doesn't need to be propped up by our enormously costly, counterproductive, ultra complex tax laws!

As usual, our so called leaders wriggle and squirm and change one or two things, at the edges!?

Like Mr Howard's (Granny killing) GST, that to date, have simply transferred the bulk of a common tax burden off the backs of those with the most, onto the backs of those with the least!

[Inasmuch as you do unto the least among you, you also do unto me! Quote unquote.]

Which along with price gouged electricity, unaffordable housing/rents, rapidly eating essential discretionary spending!

Only tweedle dum and tweedle dumber, would think that's a good idea, by surreptitiously, trying to impose more of the same!

We could do so much better, if only we had folk at the helm genuinely interested in national outcomes, far less on their own personal outcomes/vested interest!?

Kevin Andrews, allegedly has 123 negatively geared properties? Without question, he's there for the common man/hard pressed underdog!? LOL! Ditto most conservative cross benches/senior party positions?

Ditto a leader with significant sums of money squirreled away "LEGALLY" in offshore tax havens!

These are the "HIGHLY MORAL," ETHICAL CHRISTIANS, in charge of overdue reform and the return of equity and fairness! LOL! The politics of envy? HA, HA! That one's grown whiskers LOL!

As the proverbial wisdom demonstrates, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! And ours past stale, putrefying garbage!

Simply put, being able to pound a sunday morning pulpit/quote chapter and verse? Does not make one a Christian, nor does giving away comparative, never missed loose change, trying to appear as something else, somebody else? And if the cap of (trumpeted) confected outrage fits?
Alan B.

Alan,

Businesses pay 30% on taxable profits, not on turnover. This point is often confused by economic pinheads such as Getup who in a gotcha moment declared that there are 600 odd large companies that paid no tax last year, which is complete bollocks. That they paid no company tax was explained by the ATO as due to them not making any taxable profit, they did, however, pay a plethora of other taxes such as royalties, labour taxes, GST, PAYE on behalf of their employees, and miscellaneous other small taxes.

Some businesses surely do pay a 30% tax on profits, adjusted for the 10% GST they collect as unpaid tax collectors, for the government.

These are invariably small businesses, retailers, family firms, contractors and tradies! Not entities like Apple, google and numerous other tax avoiding, price gouging, profit repatriating multinationals?

The latter having all the political influence and clout and desperate to avoid simple transparent clarity! As an unavoidable 15% PAYG tax with no exclusions or adjustment, would do and far far more than many pay now!

The GST was allegedly introduced as alleged tax reform to replace the company tax we used to get before 95% of Aussie corporations, allegedly offshored their activities to minimise tax? (John Howard) Quote unquote.

With the first consequence, the overwhelming bulk of them avoiding some/most/all our tax system? Yet still contributing significant tax to the haven/host country!

And given an unavoidable tax measure the only way to readdress that sharp practise and similar tax avoidance schemes!

The almost obligatory, inevitable screams of confected outrage or the usual obfuscation by the usual suspects? Who would rather see a 5% rise in the GST?

Even though that rank stupidity, would further eat into scarcer than ever, absolutely essential discretionary spending!

And subtitled, how to make a economy spiral backwards, to eventually disappear up its own fundamental orifice, without really trying.

Boy, those pearls are not only tasteless but abominably hard to chew! So why does he keep chucking them? Oink, oink.
Alan B.

For Business, the tax should be mixture of tax on turnover and a tax on profit.

Wage and salary earners do this through paying tax on their compensation, their "turnover." Compensation is not income because its compensation for the application of time, effort, expertise, experience etc. It would be income if they thought the value of their services was 'x' but in fact they received 'x' +' 'y' 'Y' being the profit.

Don't believe me? ask the ATO for a definition of 'income' I bet you wont get one!. No tax organization in the world will give you a definition of 'income.'

Don't believe me? ask the ATO for a definition of 'income' I bet you wont get one!. No tax organization in the world will give you a definition of 'income.'
Posted by Referundemdrivensocienty, Tuesday, 8 August 2017 6:53:51 PM

From the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (as amended):
INCOME TAX ASSESSMENT ACT 1936 - SECT 6

Interpretation...

income from personal exertion or income derived from personal exertion means income consisting of earnings, salaries, wages, commissions, fees, bonuses, pensions, superannuation allowances, retiring allowances and retiring gratuities, allowances and gratuities received in the capacity of employee or in relation to any services rendered, the proceeds of any business carried on by the taxpayer either alone or as a partner with any other person, any amount received as a bounty or subsidy in carrying on a business, any amount that is included in the assessable income of the taxpayer by reason of section 393-10 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 , the income from any property where that income forms part of the emoluments of any office or employment of profit held by the taxpayer, and any profit arising from the sale by the taxpayer of any property acquired by the taxpayer for the purpose of profit-making by sale or from the carrying on or carrying out of any profit-making undertaking or scheme, but does not include:

(a) interest, unless the taxpayer's principal business consists of the lending of money, or unless the interest is received in respect of a debt due to the taxpayer for goods supplied or services rendered by the taxpayer in the course of the taxpayer's business; or

(b) rents, dividends or non-share dividends.

income from property or income derived from property means all income not being income from personal exertion.

Taxation law is not lacking definitions.