*We, the ordinary people on the street have to pay tax on turnover, no write-offs for us*

You don't have any business expense to write off, Individual. All
you have to do is turn up for work. You sell your labour.

A businessman still pays tax on his private expenses. Only business
expenses are deductable.

Now lets say I had to build an oil refinery to earn an income and
you just provided your labour. Why would it be fair that we paid
the same rate of tax on our turnover?

You really can't be this stupid. Sometimes I think that you just
want a bit of attention, so pretend that you are.

Indi, a wage earner goes to the tax man and get your tax done each year, lodge the return and hope for a refund, correct!

Well, within your return you have 'deductions', examples being union fees, work boots/cloths, any tools of trade you may require, even travel expenses in some cases if you have to use your own car to run an Erin.

These are all ligitiment deductions, and so they should be.

I know a guy who owns strip clubs. The dancers rent the chairs from him each day, that too is a tax deduction.

Your flat tax you keep referring to would be better described as a transaction tax, whereby every dollar that is banked gets taxed, but it's more like 1% or lower and is in part a turnover tax.

But to suggest that business pays tax, before paying any loans, rent consumables is just not on and would simply mean the only jobs left would be working for the government, good luck there.

There are times when ome must simply accept that they made a boo boo and withdraw the statement.

I am afraid for you, this is one of those moments.

fellers,
I know exactly where you're coming from & what you're getting at. I was hoping some of the not so greedy thinkers out would have had ideas about this whole tax shamble & put forward their ideas of an alternative tax. No bites.
Yabby,
All you have to do is turn up for work. It's like saying all you have to do is to provide an infrastructure for your employees.
What I'm saying is we all have expenses BEFORE we get to the job. You can write off your fuel, your social outings, your phone bill, your whatever. A wages bloke can't write anything off. You build an oil refinery because you know you're getting it for just about nothing after several years of write-offs. Add to that a mark-up of God only knows how many percent & you're rolling in dough. You're not putting up any money nor do you take many risks, your greedy shareholders provide all that in the hope of making big dough for putting up a few bucks which they write off also. Just about everything in business is written off so the argument of providing so much borders on fallacy.
What I'm saying there's is enormous scope of revamping our tax system, the only handicap is that businesses would make less profit. Unless you support big companies deliberately planning to go bankrupt. Unless you support people losing their money because Superannuation companies run off with the money. Unless you support the present system which is slowly chocking our economy. Is that the system you believe can't be improved.
Rehctub,
Ok then call it a transaction tax if you insist. Are you also saying the present system can't be improved ?

*You can write off your fuel, your social outings, your phone bill, your whatever *

Well no Individual, I can't. I have private expenses and business
expenses. I pay tax on private expenses. I buy a vehicle and
run a log book. I pay tax on private phone calls, pay tax on
part of the computer, as part of it is used for private, part for
business, pay tax on fuel used privately, pay tax on money used
for social outings. I pay GST on those things as well.

Some business people do rort the system, but today with data matching,
it's not hard for the tax dept to pick it up. So why should I risk
that? You would be amazed what the tax office knows about you and
everyone else in this country, all done electronically these days.

Indi, of cause the system can be improved, in fact, it must be improved, as the way we are heading, there will simply not be enough tax collected to fund everything. Shy else do you think this government wants the MRRT.

They tell us it's for the benefit of all, but their underlying motive (in my opinion) is to try to fill the void that is obviously headed our way. Even their budget estimates rely on it.

To elaborate on what Yabby said, the tax dept has programs that pick up anomalies within industries, If the figures presented fall outside these, they investigate further.

Another thing about company tax, is there is no tax free threshold, so tax is paid on every dollar of net income. Furthermore, unlike workers, you don't get your tax back if you don't work for a while.
, although is is talk about a change here, being able to write off bad years against good ones.

As for mining, there is nothing stopping anyone from going to some far away place, in the middle of nowhere and buying land, in the hope you will find minerals.

Miners did this many years ago, in fact, many went broke trying to do just that, as many found millions worth of minerals, but the cost to extract them was more than they were worth.

Now if you get your wish, for miners to fund their exploration and set up costs with after tax dollars, then the minerals will stay put and our economy will dry up.

minerals will stay put and our economy will dry up.
rehctub,
with all due respect doesn't this smell a bit of the old pro-growth mentality ? I'd have thought it'd be a good thing in the long run to slow the mining somewhat. Our businesses are way to caught up in the whirl of more growth, more profit. I'd think that, as we can't keep having growth, we'll need to look at supply & demand to stabilise our economy. The present system of over supply & slowing demand is one of the carets indicators yet that the present practices are doomed. People simple need to come to grips with the fact that we can't keep affording to spend on frivolities. The other that needs to be realised is that we'll hit a brick wall soon when the non-brick & mortar infrastructure will stop paying dividends because there's no actual substance. Way too much wealth was made from literally nothing in the digital revolution & this wealth is not shared.