While the government says everything is on the table with tax reform discussions, why is the possibility of a financial transaction tax not on this table.

The GST only taxes some, and even then they are the ones who either dont earn enough to pay tax, or they are paying this tax with after tax dollars which to me is double dipping from the tax department.

I thought everything on the table would include everything!

The only way you will get a financial transaction tax is as well as a GST. The fat cats have to pay more, simple as that.

....The fat cats have to pay more, simple as that.

579, the fat cats (high income earners) are the only reason the rest can survive, yet the likes of you want them to pay even more.

Now if by fat cats you mean multi nationals that profit share, then by all means demand more, but only, and i stress the word ONLY, if you are prepared for the possible consequences as few give credit for what they actually bring to the table..

The evidence is there, Australia is in fact a low tax country. with tax avoidance by both big business, and small, rife. Governments of both persuasions have done little to recoup the billions lost each year from tax revenue by shonky business practices. Australians would be out of their minds to support a minimum 50% hike in the GST while at the same time supporting a company tax cut for the big end of town.

I agree with Butch, if everything concerning tax is on the table, why not consider a financial transaction tax? Could this tax talk have more to do with reducing the tax burden on business even further, while slugging the ordinary Aussie Battlers with a great big GST! Come on Malcolm, where are your socialists leanings now? LOL.

We had a financial transaction tax - two, in fact - in Australia for the twenty years between 1982 and 2002. They were scrapped at GST-time, primarily as I recall because the cost of collection rendered the net amount irrelevant.

Which - and I am tempted to add "of course" - is the reason we do not have a transaction tax today, and are unlikely to have a useful one in the near future. They are complex in nature, difficult to implement, and a nightmare to enforce in line with their primary objective, where the outcomes are frequently ambiguous.

Just saying the words "financial transaction tax" is manifestly unhelpful. What might just be useful is a positive proposal of a specific implementation of FTT that we can discuss, evaluate and justify.

If history is anything to go by, the chances of that happening on this forum are negligible, since there is an almost total ignorance of even the basics of financial systems here present.

I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. Unfortunately, the Arjays of this world will derail any halfway-intelligent conversation almost immediately, and we will be left - as usual - discussing conspiracy theories involving some imaginary Rothschild world-domination.

Butch,

I agree with Pericles, if a FTT worked, most countries would already have one. That most countries don't is testament to its many failures.

An efficient tax has 4 criteria:
1 It must be difficult to avoid,
2 It must be easy to track, collect, and enforce.
3 It must have as little negative effect on the economy as possible,
4 and above all it must generate substantially more revenue than it cost to collect.

The FTT fails miserably as follows:
1 It is easy to avoid by using overseas transaction accounts, and derivatives etc as the ATO can only tax transactions in Aus.
2 Because of 1 above it is difficult and expensive for the ATO to track and collect.
3 Australian banks make commissions on transactions that will move en mass to overseas financial institutions. The burden of the tax falls on individuals and small businesses.
4 The result is a tax that is very costly to administer and generates little revenue.

Which is why the FTT, while sounding like a great idea is as crappy as the defunct mining tax.

Pericles and Shadow Minister, while i understand your concerns, we are no longer in the 80. or 2002.

As a small business owner for the past 26 years, i have seen the the likes of electronic banking and EFTPOS, with the latter now accounting for 65 to 70% of sales and this figure would be even higher in other industries. Furthermore, even cheques are becoming a thing of the past so tracking transactions would be far simpler than on previous attempts.

As for off shore transfers, these are all coming from a local bank account so they would not avoid the tax.

Of cause the banks would no doubt increase their fees for collecting the tax, which to me is not unreasonable, but even if we paid say 2%, plus another 2% in fees, thats still way less than income tax.

My point is that if all options are on the table, why not at lease do the numbers on this tax, because if it proven to be viable, it would see an awful lot of money stimulating our economy and, it would be a much fairer tax as the GST is paid with after tax dollars which is in its very nature, double dipping.

So while im not disputing your input, i think the least our government can do is some serious modeling because two things are very clear. The first being that our present tax collection system is out of date and the second is that increasing the GST by a whopping 50% will have a huge negative impact, especially if labor has its way and reintroduces the carbon tax and cuts emissions by such a ridiculous amount.

I am fairly certain that more than a handful of government number-crunchers are doing exactly that, rehctub, even as we speak.

>>My point is that if all options are on the table, why not at lease do the numbers on this tax,<<

It is a hot topic in Europe right now, with a number of FTT options being discussed, and at least a couple of approaches slated for introduction in January.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/12/us-eurozone-tax-idUSKCN0RC0J520150912#u3FxLslbWF4uoj0H.97

The problem is - as I pointed out earlier - that there is no clear evidence that such a system will a) work b) work efficiently or c) achieve its purpose without causing economic damage elsewhere.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21641258-new-life-bad-idea-still-kicking

And from a businessman like yourself, rehctub, I find this a little disturbing:

>>even if we paid say 2%, plus another 2% in fees, thats still way less than income tax.<<

We already have a point-of-sale tax. It is called GST. And those sorts of numbers applied across the board to financial transactions would kill off our banking industry in a heartbeat.

Butch, there is already a transaction tax called the GST.

A 2% FTT tax will deduct 2% of every salary cheque, every withdrawal, or transfer to your wife, your super, every purchase of shares, your tax payment etc, and every transaction on every item before it reaches you.

E.g. the electricity generator pays 2% on coal and services, Transgrid pays 2% to the generator, Ausgrid pays 2% to Transgrid, the retailer pays 2% to Ausgrid and you pay 2% to the retailer. Suddenly you have doubled the GST. Unless of course you create the big inefficient monopolies that own everything.

But worse is the derivative and hedge funds of local banks that effectively insure financial transactions whose margins are often a fraction of 1%. This business will simply move overseas. Similarly, big international companies will simply move all their trades and transactions to a branch in say Singapore.

Suddenly cash will become king, and the people that will pay the tax will be the lower income consumers, and the profits on which company tax is paid will evaporate.