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 The first being that our present tax collection system is out of date and the second is that increasing the GST by a whopping 50% will have a huge negative impact, especially if labor has its way and reintroduces the carbon tax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.