Australia's taxation base is very limited. We need more funds to pay for essential services. To do this we need more money. Yet very few people seem to be willing to accept an increase in the rate of the GST. Why?

An Australian newspaper editorial gives an emotional but fake sounding editorial on the matter - to protect the Liberal Party at:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/no-excuse-for-gst-increase/story-e6frg71x-1226724720856

The people of Australia - should be willing to pay more in GST to get better roads, hospitals, schools and other services for their benefit.

tax ignorance
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6196&page=9

Flat Tax & be done with it. Pay so much in the Dollar & all your contrbutions for pension, health care are taken care of. No deductions after you get your pay unless you want extra & then you simply contribute more. No writing anything off. Earn a Dollar pay so much Tax. My guess is 20% would cover it. Also, a couple of stipulations where you want some of your tax Dollar to go. Sorry, hangers-on you'll need to put in an effort in my system. Ah & yes, no dole unless you've done National Service. Get it ?

NathanJ, the GST is a very inefficient tax as it gets paid by business, then claimed back, then paid by the next step, then claimed back then finally the consumer pays the tax and that's it, the end of the line.

Another problem with this tax is that it is a one off retail tax.

It is my view that the best tax option would be a transaction tax, as unlikenthe GST, income tax and company tax, it is paid ove and over again as money changes hands.

Now the interesting part is that we as PAYG earners woukd only ever pay the tax once because you can only spend money once and, as it's been suggest that a TT tax of just 2% will replace every other tax we have, so the most any PAYG earner would pay is $20 out of every $1000.00.

The trick is that this is a tax on money, not people, so, the very small tax is generated every single time your $1000 is transferred from one account to another and this happens thousands of time each and every day.

The other strong point of this tax is that businesses, large or small pay just as much tax (per dollar) as the average person on the street therefore removing the unfair arrangement we have now whereby ABN holders get their GST back.

So in effect it is a flat tax, it's just on money not people which makes it much more fairer in my view.

The problem with increasing the GST is that it hurts low income earners because, unlike high earners, they (low earners) often require 100% of their income for necessities, so to increase this will hurt them more than anyone else.

We did have a perfectly good mining tax once.

but nah that was a "great big new tax" wasnt it

Lets slug the povos with an increase in GST and lower the threshold for buying stuff from overseas while your at it.
And dont forget to abolish the plebs penalty rates and drive out every manufacturer we can. And then when they end up penniless and on the dole we can kick em some more.

Is this what they mean by "class war"?

Better idea.

Get rid of half the bureaucrats, & ALL the NGOs, & we will be able to cut taxes.