In my day making savings meant spending less. The about $16bn "savings" that Swan has made to rescue the budget comes nearly entirely from increased taxes or lower rebates.

With businesses struggling, the last thing they need is tripling the additional costs and paperwork of monthly tax returns instead of quarterly. Simply increasing company tax by about 1% would get the same revenue and cost companies less, but Swanny does not be seen to raise taxes, so he does it by stealth.

This is Labor all over, Spin over substance.

SCORECARD

young Aussie mums.....0
Superanuants..........0
Illegal strangers.....1 BILLION + whatever it takes.

SM is looking to get his ears boxed again.

I see from this year's "savings" there is about $2bn that comes from company tax payments for the 2nd quarter (April May) that were due in July (next tax year) will now be paid in this tax year.

This is not a saving but simply fiddling the books.

What a crook.

579

Perhaps you need to resort to boxing, as verbally you have been repeatedly whipped.

You obviously can't spell or grasp the concepts, and much of which you post has no relevance to the topic, and looks pasted from a Labor songsheet.

I look forward to you actually contributing to any thread, but am not holding my breath.

One post in such a thread is more than enough.
IF Labor did not plan to bring in a surplus it would be subject of our authors unhappiness.
That author conveniently, over looks the masssive cuts his side are planning.
And those they are hiding.
The Baby bonus is a disgrace, and a waste.
Nearly the equal to Abbott,s planned middle and high income subsidy to have a child.
I may well be a Cynic, but an honest one, this thread has no intention of debating the issue.
Just as is habitual,constructed mud throwing negativity.

The nerves are raw today. Toxic Tony has been foot swallowing again.
This thread is all about how negative you can be, not one job lost, and that is seen as bad.
Fancy the likes of Abbott sticking up for new mothers.
$5000 was somewhat over the top i think.
No one will have a problem with that one, except Toni and the fat bloke.
Not one job lost, that will reverberate around the halls of the liberal camp, and Toxic Toni is planning 20,000 public service jobs to axe.
The unemployment figures are not high enough for the 1% fraternity.
It's time Turnbull came to the rescue, and shored up the flagging liberal camp.

Shadow Minister, please provide us with a link to where you complained on any online forum, about how the coalition, whilst in power, increased the number of times a company must put in their tax forms and pay their tax, from yearly to quarterly.

I bet you wrote NOTHING about that .... ANYWHERE. If you did, then provide us with the link.

DP,

The idiocy and arrogance of your last post is epic.

Firstly, as the introduction of quarterly payments was in 2000, long before I, and the vast majority even started on Blogs, (First ever Blogs were circa 1997) so the absence of my blogging on the issue is completely irrelevant.

Secondly, You lied when you said you were prepared to pay $50 to a charity if it was proven that Juliar Gillard lied.

P.S. Can anyone prove that Juliar did not lie?

579 and DP,
Personally I would like to see the baby bonus abolished completely. I was a poor move by Costello.

However, you can bet that most mothers to be will not be happy about having to go without a $2000 handout.

Serves Labor right for spending like drunken sailors a year or so ago, and for bungling the illegal boat people policy.

Aussie mothers are now paying for labor stupidity.

Why don't these callous drongos look at their own benefits to recoup some money ? 50 Grand a year payrise & they're talking about taking a few dollars off the battling mums ? I'm not in favour of the baby bonus but if the pollies have no qualms about the quality of life for many young children then they certainly should have no qualms about cutting their own utterly undeserved benefits. B....y hypocrites & useless ones at that. That goes for all parties.

I am afraid this is simply the beginning of what's to come, regardless of who is in power, as once wasted, money can not be used again.

As for the budget, firstly, Swan should never have strived for a surplus at any cost.

Secondly, Rudd should never have removed the workable solution that was in place for stopping the boats and, while I recognize the illegals problem would have been worse than before, a workable system is easier to improve than to remove as was the case.

As for the baby bonus, this was one of the worst ever policies implemented by any government and, despite the fact that decent people received the benefit, there is little doubt it was a fizzer, as it simply encouraged losers to breed.

But, the bottom line is, someone needs to tell labor that they can only spend money once.

Finally, yet another attack on business confidence by an incompitent bean counter.

All he is doing is taking an IOU from next year, and cause grief to many business people, who, by the way, are already uncertain due to government policy and reckless mind changing mid term.

If they (labor) cause this pain and don't achieve surplus, we may see the end of the worlds smartest treasurer.

We can only hope his crew sinks with the same boat.

Well for all their public whining about new taxes , the Libs only actually opposed 8 of the supposedly terrible 26 new taxes introduced by the ALP and are even planning for some new ones of their own to fund their Parental Leave Scheme and however else they are going to plug their rather significant black hole.

As for the big tax grab, total tax as a percentage of GDP is now lower than it was during the Howard years.

When it comes to creative accounting, to cook their books the Libs let unfunded Federal superannuation deliberately blow out from $70 billion to $103 billion, thereby overstating their surpluses by $33 billion. Then they had to sell Telstra to set up the Future Fund but were really just plugging up their own revenue hole before somebody noticed. Then they nicked another $23 billion from the Reserve Bank to help buy more votes.

Since a significant part of their surplus was outstanding HECS debt, it only took a stroke of the ministerial pen to increase HECS rates and thereby automatically increase the surplus without doing anything else.

So what’s new?

The main point I was trying to make is that only a tiny proportion of the $16bn "Savings" that Labor has made is actual reduction in expenditure. Most of it is from increasing taxes, and comes with lots of additional costly work for business.

When businesses revenues go down, that's just the time to hit them up for more tax.

Wobbles, you continue to bag the Howard years, so can you please explain, that if this was such a black period for us, why then did the country BOOM and why are we now in the duldrums.

Or, are you one of the 'denials' club?

It is very hard to argue that had the libs still been in office, we would have come through the GFC, not seen the huge influx of illegals and had money in the bank from the mining boom.

The reality that no one can deny, is that after just five odd years, we are in exactly the opp position.

SM reduction in spending, tax increases, and not one job lost. The libs are only happy if there is 10% unemployment. That means cheaper labour.
Butch the libs are not in office, so that question is about as bad as if your aunty had balls she would be your uncle.
You lot are really scratching around in the bottom of the barrel, to find a little pork of course.
I notice Toni dribbled more slime yesterday. He just can not help himself.

579

Whine Swan did not mention taxes he called it savings.

The measures are roughly 90% increased tax collection, 9% decreased family payments, and almost zero in reduced public service expenditure.

Having set up a forum to discuss future tax strategies with business, that these measures were a complete surprise to business shows how much of a sham the "consultation with business". That almost every business has panned this is no surprise.

Read the 131 pages of cuts and savings and you will get the right story.
When is business ever happy, This budget round up has just skimmed a little fat, and hurt nobody. Not one job lost.

""" Whine Swan """

Heheheh! I just blew red whine all over my keyboard when I read that one. What a beauty :)

579, history is a very hard thing to disregard.

The libs have history on their side, something that no one can deny.

I don't know, in my adult life, of any government that has wasted so much, in such a short time, as labor has.

Now of cause, as expected, they are looking for others to fill the void left by their reckless spending, a result of failure upon failure.

How on earth anyone can wish for more of the same defies logic in my opinion.

rehctub.

Some people see those years through rose-coloured glasses.
Sure, some people were better off but many others weren't, as could be seen in the election result.

As well as (some parts of) the economy the other things that really "boomed" were bankruptcies, suicides and rates of homelessness.

One difference between then and now is that Howard had a compliant and biassed media behind him and more control over public opinion and the stifling of public debate. As well as that, from the 2004 election he allowed the Liberal Party policies to be effectively hijacked by the religious right and market-obsessed ideology.

Another difference is that despite all the massive cuts to essential services and the sale of almost every public asset, all we had to show for it was an entrenched culture of middle-class vote buying welfare, the only infrastructure was a dud railway between SA and Darwin and some flagpoles in schools, growing racial dissent and a couple of neverending wars (in exchange for selling out our international competitiveness with a dodgey US free-trade agreement).

I use him as an example because from what I can see Abbott will dismantle everything the ALP did and try to pick up where Howard left off, except he will go much much further - particularly if he has a complete majority in both houses.

It's about society as well, not just day-to-day economic debates.

Wobbles,

"As well as (some parts of) the economy the other things that really "boomed" were bankruptcies, suicides and rates of homelessness."

As far as I recall, under labor bankruptcies, unemployment, and homelessness are higher than in 2007 under Howard.

With the vaunted mining tax, predicted to raise $11bn over 3 years, Labor went and blew the lot, now with it likely not not to raise one red cent, Labor once again left looking like economic imbeciles.

Looks like Mr Abbott will be explaining his punch up with a female over the next six months.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/footage-captures-geoff-shaw-making-obscene-hand-gesture-claims-opposition-deputy-leader-james-merlino/story-e6frg6n6-1226502172132
Doubt we will see much Liberal indignation about this.
Note however, with video unchallengeable.
They are still denying it!
And they say Gillard lies!

I find it strange that people vindicate politiciants form the slightest hint of violence, yet the odd outburst makes them closer to human.

Now while I don't condone violence, the likes of Russel Crow gets away with it and goes on to become a mega star.

Now despite all the labor followers out there, things are looking pretty bleak, in fact, you would be hard pressed to find an economist with confidence in our immediate future, and let's face it, that what matters the most.

The RBA doesn't bring int rates to record lows, just to win votes.

As for labor's tax on the miners, they (labor) have been outsmarted once again, as miners have invested their profits.

But some of us knew that would happen.

What we didn't know is that 'super profits' may be a thing of the past.

Without the tax, along with the 'no end in sight' illegals debacle, I think we are in serious trouble.

When is business ever happy,
579,
Most likely when the 579's of this world pull their own weight.

Record low interest rates. This is to encourage house byres more than anything. Tony should have admitted, his frustration, rather than deny it ever happened.
Who knows what is around the corner in world economics. It may get worse . Mining is at normal level, without the boom which was never going to be sustainable.

This is strange.

One minute there's all sorts of hand-wringing and whining about how this evil tax was going to close down the mining industry and throw thousands out of work.

Then when the claimed profits (for the first quarter only) come in under the "super-profits" level due to a slump in resource prices (and some clever accounting tricks no doubt) the whining changes to complaints that it didn't tax the industry hard enough.

Then again, considering the initial response to the Carbon Tax "wrecking ball" coming to destroy us all - maybe it's not so strange after all.

In a strange society such as here strange is normal.

Labor after being in government for the peak of the biggest mining boom in history with tax revenues up to 4x what was achieved under Howard, have failed to produce a single surplus, and the 4 biggest deficits in history.

Labor's legacy will be a public service that is further bloated by about 6%, not producing additional services, but to monitor their additional 18000 pieces of regulation and red tape that strangles industry.

Whine Swan's reaction to falling revenues is not to prune these parasitic bodies, but to increase taxes and paper work for those that actually generate revenue.

The MRRT is a monument to arrogance, incompetence and deceit. The original super tax generated a predictable angry reaction from the miners (already amongst the highest taxed in the world) who only 4 days before the announcement had been promised by Swan that the tax was only a draft proposal for consultation with industry. This stuff up helped Juliar (who according to Maxine Mckew had been plotting against Rudd) to depose him. Juliar and Swan then negotiated with the 3 big companies a tax that suited them.

To compound this idiocy Labor spent all the predicted revenue from the MRRT ahead of time only to find they had been duped.

The interim budget was brought out early to show a $1.1bn surplus is built on layers of BS and phoney accounting:
It still includes $2bn from the MRRT,
It moved expenditure from the 2012 tax year to 2011,
It brought forward 2 months company tax revenue from 2013 to 2012.

If Swan tried to dress up a companies books this way he would have been fired or even jailed.

I have to agree with SM.

The MRRT.
This is a typical example of big business, outsmarting government, who, by the way, draw their brains trust from those that the corporate world passed up.

If a treasurer was that clever, he would be in the corporate world, earning seven figures and not have more than half the population hating him. Clearly, he is incapable.

Why I say, outsmarted, is because any profits made by the miners have been reinvested, as opposed to being paid in additional taxes, taxes that in any case would have been used to prop us one of the many labor stuff ups.

If you wish to introduce a 'super profits tax' then anyone earning a Super profit should pay, not just the miners, as they already pay royalties for the finite resource they mine.

As form the carbon tax, of cause the sky would not fall in, however, a dripping tap will not immediately fill a glass, however, once the glass is full, this is when the damage will be done.

This tax will have crippling effects, however, by the time the effects have been felt, it will be too little, too late for many, as they will have changed course, or invested elsewhere.

Don't agree, that's fine, but watch this space.

AsBelly said himself, for every action, there is a reaction, and it may not be immediate.

Butch what are you on about, the MRRT has been in operation for 3 months
during that time they have come off the boom, and payd off employees.
Wouldn't it be more responsible to wait for a full 12 months before you say what they did with the super profits.
The carbon tax will eventually kill australia, some people know that. You are looking for pork in the barrel again.

579,

The tax has been in force for 3 months. Every quarter each major company does a full profit and loss statement and pays their taxes based on this. It is clear that based on volumes, prices, and tax offsets that the liability to pay the MRRT = 0.

If the prices rise again to their peak, this may change, but all the signs are that they will not. Unless of course you know something that everyone else doesn't.

How can anyone say the 0 MRRT tax will be the norm. The miners went backwards to a more sustainable level, during that three months. I don't see any reason to crow about something that was always going to happen.
Booms are not good for anyone. Unless you are gina.
We are in a stable environment, But there are people out there that continually talk the economy down. This is not helpful.

579,

At the "more sustainable" mineral prices, the profit margins are lower and the MRRT = 0, it may change if the prices go up and profit margin goes up, but this is not likely before june 2013.

579, anticipating a tax windfall is one thing, spending it before you get it is another.

Does the saying 'don't count your chickens before they hatch ' ring a bell.

What ever colored glasses you wish to look through, labor are incompient.

579, I also note you say The miners went back to a more sustainable level.

So, assuming they stay at a 'sustainable level' would I be correct in assuming they will never pay the tax?

If so, how then do we explain to the believers out there, the ones who fell for this spin, that the planned/promised win fall simply won't happen?

As I have said many times over, the government acts on past events, not what is going to happen and the signs were there that mining would slow.

You just have to read between the lines.

I guess more importantly, where to now, as the illegals debacle is still there, but the boost in income is not.

So what do you propose we sacrifice now, esspecially if mining stays at what you call 'sustainable levels' leaving a void of some $11 billion over the next four years.

Remembering of cause that each boat costs us an average of $12 million.