Not interested in tax arguments, but really sick of this 'jobs created' nonsense from politicians, who don't create anything, let alone jobs. That the claim about job creation is a lie is evidenced by the fact that we ALWAYS have about 750,000 people out of work.

The only people who can creat jobs are employers in the private sector; and these people will do this only if they NEED to (unlike politicians who can dream up bulls..t jobs at taxpayer expense).

Employers need to increase employment only if consumers need more of their products, or if they can't use technology to do more. Currently, they don't have any need for more employees, and the tax argument is nothing more than a pissing contest between two ideologies.

IRRELEVANT! And time wasting &*(^#@! And that's putting it politely.

Time this rubbish was buried and the garbage we call a tax act thrown out along with the entirely unproductive vultures who gain a living inside the money churn, euphemistically called tax practice?

For the year ended 2017, the highest rate of actual tax paid by any company was just 13 cents in the dollar, with around a third paying little or none?

And only because a crooked system with more holes than swiss cheese allows just that, almost as if in the extreme and costly complexity, designed for just such purpose or quite rampant avoidance!?

Look, 13% plus averaged compliance costs (7%) cost the average bottom line 20%, As per their current legal tax obligations?

Now, if we threw out the garbage? And replaced all the C.R.A.P., with simple unavoidable 15% flat tax with no allowed deductions?

All those paying a legal share plus tax-related compliance costs would pay in total, 5% less THAT'S 5% LESS!

And 4% less for Joe Blow, PAYE lowest rate, taxpayer.

We need this reform to allow every entity, repeat, every entity to pay a fair share above an amended ceiling. And forever end the spectre of lazy bracket creep!

When the only allowable answer to revenue shortfalls, debt and deficit, is turbocharged economic growth, And with OUR economic sovereignty intact!

Sadly for the Author and his tax practitioner cohort, that would end the parasitical gravy train they prey on, doing nothing that adds value or even actually productive!?

And why when really long overdue reform is proposed that of necessity also excludes them.
They come out with this "obsfucation'?

They've been and were redundant long before our footwear and textile industries.

Even so, come out with absurd spurious irrelevancies, simply to protect an industry that should have gone the way of the Dodo eons ago!

Hence this self-serving promotion? Served up as legitimate tax debate?
Alan B.

Just the usual twaddle from the extreme right The Catallaxy Files and citing Sloan,Davidson next cab off the rank will be Ergas all Rupes pets
I think I would trust Leigh long before I would trust any of that lot of failures

Labor once had reasonable economists and agreed that company and individual taxes needed to be lowered. Today they have idiots.

The rest of the world are lowering taxes and Aus is being left behind. God help Aus if Labor gets in.

Shadow,
>Labor once had reasonable economists and agreed that company and individual taxes needed to be lowered
...and they lowered them. And now we have lower taxes, it makes sense to concentrate on other things. Lowering taxes is one of a multitude of alternatives the government could implement to improve conditions for business. But considering the cost to the government would be very high and the benefit low, I can only conclude this call for lower taxes is driven by ideology not practicality.

>Today they have idiots.
They've always had idiots, as have the Libs, Nats and most, if not all, of the minor parties.

Aidan,

20 years ago Aus had one of the lowest company and personal income tax rates in the world. This along with reasonable labour costs and the nearly the world's cheapest power prices, which led to a flood of foreign investment that powered the OECD's fastest-growing economy and standard of living.

Today, we have one of the highest rates of company tax, power prices and labour costs, with the inevitable result that foreign investment has slowed to a trickle and Aus companies, are now investing money overseas, and the economy and wage growth has stagnated.

Shadow,
Firstly, why do you think we should have to rely on foreign investment rather than our own?
Secondly, why do you think the company tax rate is so much more important than all the other factors that drive corporate investment?

Aidan,

We have to rely on both domestic and international investment as domestic sources are often not big enough for the large projects. Both domestic and foreign firms can invest anywhere that gives good yields. The problem is not just that we are losing foreign investment, but that local firms are choosing to invest overseas as well.