Interesting idea Yabby. Would such a rebate be seen as a subsidy. Under most trade agreements that we are locked into, we are not allowed to have trade subsidies as it is "uncompetitive" according to the agreements.

I'm not sure of the terminology whether or not a tax rebate could be seen as a trade subsidy. It would be a good loophole if we could get away with it.

I can't see why it should be seen as a subsidy. Most of those
taxes are in fact taxes that don't apply in other countries.
How many countries tax employment? Thats what say payroll
tax effectively is. Thats fine if you are say Westpac or
similar, you just pass your costs on. But if you are competing
on a world market, its not fine, IMHO its not accectable,
so don't be amazed when people don't bother exporting
from Australia

I completely agree with you Yabby. It would actually be relatively simple to administer - self assess with audits, like most other tax rebates (now called offsets, just to keep another public servant in a job). Saintfletcher, to my mind, a rebate/offset, is less likely to be seen as a subsidy than a grant. The theory behind it would be the same as not levying GST on exports - dont impose an internal tax on external consumers. It would no doubt encourage more producers into exporting, only helping our current account (which is in dire need of help).

Yabby said: "Otherwise lots of people simply won't bother and it will only be when the Aussie peso really crashes, that people will start to value exports. At present they don't."

Sadly, it seems that nothing short of a credit crunch will be able to rebalance Australia towards more exports.

Total debt in the Australian economy is now about 152% of GDP and growing. Most of that debt has been used to finance the national real estate bubble, rather than new export industries needed to actually service our ballooning foreign liabilities. When asked about Australia's external imbalances, Howard and Costello take a line from Joh Bjelke-Peterson. "Now don't you worry about that," they say. "The debt simply reflects private sector business decisions...it's all serviceable." The worsening trade figures suggest otherwise.

Yabby

Good Idea

Here is another to add to it.

Austrade to be run by inderpendant public group free from the thumbs of Trade Ministers.

Assist Australian Farmers to work direct with overseas contacts and put AQIS under the eye of the public as well

No more ok!s over the phones for Halal accreditations and the many other its ok I will scratch your back if you scratch mine approach.

Let everybody promote their ideas through Austrade and whoever is interested can contact the person who placed the adds through Austrade and MLA and all the other reps of different industries.