I read that Peter Costello said Mr Rudd's proposed tax changes would make us $600 a year poorer.I made a list of my everyday living costs and would you believe,i am poorer to the tune on nearly $2,ooo a year thanks to the GST.I would be saving money if i were to buy cars ,electrical equipment or other luxury items.The wages in this house have not increased by the amount of extra i am paying to survive.I get 5 bags of groceries for the price of 6.When you do the sums,10% of your wage is gone before you even get it.Sit down and tally exactly how much the GST is costing your household and you will be surprised at the figure.Keep in mind that all tradesmen,car repairs,phone, power,insurances,rates ad infinitum have an extra 10% over and above what they used to cost.When we have a CPI rise,on goes more GST.Until you do the sums,you don't realise how much of your hard earned dollar is going down the gurgler.

Since the beginning of time, avoiding taxes has been the aim of those who have the income to pay tax.
Prior to the GST there was a wholesale sales tax on many products that were manufactured but nothing on services. One of the perks of being rich was to avoid paying Sales Tax. It was very easy to accomplish so the rich got richer and the poor paid more taxes.
A nuisance it may be but it is much more difficult to avoid paying GST than it was the wholesale sales tax.
All of the services provided by Government i.e., health, education, roads, railways, water, police and the armed forces are paid for by those of us who pay tax.
The GST has made it more difficult for the rich to avoid paying their fair share of the cost of living in the best country in the world. Well, having lived in Europe, North America and the Middle East, I'd rather pay the GST here than go and live in some dank fetid mosquito ridden third world country where they don't pay taxes.
I'd count your blessings haygirl. I really would.

I agree with you haygirl, but I'm not a wage earner. I am self employed in a small business providing B&B accommodation.
Unfortunately we gross more than $50,000.00 so it is not classified as a hobby, which means I must collect and pay GST.
1. I spend at least a week of every quarter attending to work entailed by the BAS. These approximately 160 hours per year I work for the government as an unpaid tax collector. These hours can't just be snatched from the air, I've had to give up other activities to do this unpaid work.
2. Our accommodation prices have to include GST giving an unfair price advantage to 'hobby' businesses.
Thus the GST became a bed tax on my business but not on all my competitors.
3. Because of the service I provide and the homegrown, home preserved nature of the meals we offer, I can not claim much GST as inputs.

Thus I have encountered all the costs you mention, but have also had my income diminished through unfair competition and have become an unpaid worker for the government. I hate it!

Another aspect is that the introduction of GST didn't get rid of other taxes. For example, petrol excise remained in place and, when GST was added, it became a tax on a tax.

Also, the legalised robbery of 'stamp duty' is still with us. Why do I have to hand over a five-figure-sum to the government for the pleasure of buying a house? Mark Knopfler would call it 'money for nothing'.

why, jack? because they have the courts, cops, and sas on their side. pay up, or do time. unless you slip a little cash in the campaign fund, but that's a different story.

i wonder what they teach ozzies in school, that they arrive in adulthood unable to understand the significance of being a 'subject'. to be fair, in recent years there has been an insistence on using the word 'citizen' instead, as though citizen and democracy were merely modern terms replacing old-fashioned subject and monarchy.

in fact, you don't get from subject/monarchy to citizen/democracy without struggle, usually violent struggle. you don't get there verbally. all you get verbally is 'doublethinked' and 'newspeaked'.

Hi Phoenix94,I am aware of rich avoiding taxes .In some ways they have still come out on top as the luxury taxes have been removed.The caviar and champagne is a lot cheaper now.They still do avoid taxes with all the write offs they claim on their tax returns.I'm poor and am paying more taxes now than ever before.I do count my blessings that i live in Australia but i am pissed off that my living standard has deteriorated because of GST.Thank goodness i make all my own clothes or i'd be running around naked.After the basic neccessities are paid for i now have no money left.No holidays,no going out for dinner and god help me if my fridge or washing machine should blow up.
Country girl,I feel very sorry for your plight and unfortunately the GST can't be undone now.Maybe you should send a bill to the federal government for all the time you spend doing BAS.My daughter did that,(different circumstances)and would you believe,they came to the party.
Jack,were you aware that since the introduction of GST their has been over 130 new taxes introduced.When GST came in we were told "their will be no new taxes."
It doesn't matter who wins this election because the damage is done.
I'm surprised Death Duties haven't been reintroduced.As you say,we are paying taxes on taxes.

DEMOS, I'll pick our version of politics over your US version anyway. Its full of flaws, but at the very least they are flaws that we are used to and understand. I have no problem with trying to improve things, but prefer to err on the side of caution rather than leap into the unknown.

I admit I am a fence-sitter on the topic of GST - I can see both the arguements for and against. It has certainly simplfied matters for most retailers, but complicated them for service industries in particular.

As to stamp duty, you need to look back at our taxation history and that which we inherited from England. We make a big song and dance about the widening gap between and rich and the poor, but once upon a time that gap was much bigger than now. Land-based taxes were the most common (income tax is only a relatively new concept), as the thought-process was that only the rich could afford land, and thus could afford to carry the bulk of the tax burden. Hence the use of taxes such as stamp duty on land purchases. The other side of the coin is that the problem with asset taxes such as stamp duty, is that the tax can possibly be levied on someone that is asset rich but cash poor. Hence income taxes are now more popular (with governments anyway!) as its taxing cashflow and hence is a lot easier to recover.

Country Gal, if we inherited stamp duty from England, we've ccertainly perfected it. I bought a couple of houses in Scotland before coming here.and the stamp duty was a minimal charge. When I first bought here, I told the girl at the bank that she had put an extra zero on to the stamp duty. I was proved wrong as the rate for calculating stamp duty in Australia was then, and maybe still is, approxinately ten times that of the UK. I find it disgusting.

What makes the GST different from the previous system is that it catches up with everybody, even those who paid little tax before - such as pensioners - and creates a lot of extra administrative effort for the self employed.

It's also sneaky because it hides how much tax we really pay.

Look in your wallet, purse or savings account. Some of that money already belongs to the government - you're just holding it for them and they will get it eventually.

Look at your credit card statement. Some of that interest you are paying is actually interest on a tax.

Whinge, whinge, whinge, I can't believe the way so many people have such high expectations and expect the government to supply all the services they do without taxing people. Life isn't fair. In the same way as people are never born equal, some have qualities that give them an edge. It will always be thus and all the government can attempt to do is make it as equal as possible without stifling incentives. Just try and live in other part of the world and you will soon realise that we have got it pretty damned good here. I was born before the second world war and suffered the war years and all the deprivation of rationing and pass-me-down clothes. All my clothes are still second hand. I never eat out, I don't smoke or drink but am totally self sufficient and have never taken the dole, yet I have a great life. A bit of self discipline goes a long way. Try it.

Hi snake,it's not a matter of whinging,it's a matter of asking why my lifestyle should deteriorate because some asXXXX in Canberra thinks he needs to get more taxes out of me.Taxes i may add that are stored and now used in electioneering as "look what a great surplus we have.I have always had to struggle and i managed okay and never whinged.I am asking a simple question.How has the GST affected you.If we had a war and things were rationed or we had a recession,okay,but we are supposed to be having a boom time.If that is the case,why are things so tough?Keep in mind that i have no debt only the day to day running of a house that i own.People are saying truthfully how they have been affected,that doesn't constitute whinging.

Haygirl,your sums don't add up.The GST replaced a plethora of Govt taxes including sales tax of 20%.Inflation stayed the same.Prices overall did not go up.As the economy gets more competitive businesses absorb alot of the GST.Look at the prices of cars and plasma TVs, they ahe fallen.Food prices have gone up because of the drought and preditory pricing of Woolies and Coles who are monopoloising the market.There is no GST on most food items

It is not that simple,so take a deep breath and be more analytical.

arjay,if i could feed my family cars and plasma tv's it may actually cost me less.I'm well aware that costs have risen but i'm also aware that GST goes ontop of any price increases.Write down all your bills and work out how much gst is costing you.The amount is enormous.In this house the wages have not gone up enough to cover the increase in costs.
A lot of people have no complaints about GST but i am from a lower income bracket(not social security)and we are feeling the pinch.As i've already said,luxury items,like plasma tv's,cars,champagne and caviar have gone down but the basic staples of life have increased.I know we have price rises all the time but now we have GST on top again.Just my power bill alone is costing me twice what it did 10 years ago and the GST on that alone amounts to 100 dollars a year and i actually use less power now.The question was "how has GST affected your life".I am not an economics scholar just a struggling housewife who is pissed off because my life style has deteriorated under the present system.Sure some things are cheaper BUT they are not the things that poorer people buy.

Arjay, I dare say that haygirl is right on this. I am well aware of the sales taxes that were removed, but most of these were not from everyday consumables. Clothes are the other common item that were subject to sales tax, but if you make your own clothes or shop at op shops (or Ebay), then you wont notice savings there either. As for electrical items etc - well there are even some of us younger generation that will only buy s/h - hey you never know when they will turn into antiques! :)

You are correct in saying that there is no GST on most food items (fresh food anyway), but bear in mind that a significant proportion of a weekly shopping bill goes on other grocery items. EG washing powder, shampoos, soaps, toilet paper, personal hygiene, razors etc etc etc. And the prices of these items have been going up and up - very few could be considered to be drought-effected either.

A couple of the most offensive GST situations that I know of:
1. GST on fuel excise (a tax on a tax)
2. Stamp duty on a new house (new homes are subject to GST and the stamp duty is paid on the GST inclusive value)

Stamp duty was inherited from the UK, but I am talking about more than 100 years ago, so I expect that the two systems have diverged significantly since then.