David Bradbury had an op-ed in the AFR this morning. This line, sounds great, but just isn’t.
I will never accept the proposition that in the future Australian families and small businesses should shoulder more of the tax burden in the absence of a fair contribution from multinational enterprises that go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their tax obligations are next to nothing.
So I thought I’d check out how much tax Bradbury’s constituents pay compared to small business and compared to large business.
I think that his constituents and small and micro business has a long, long way to go before they shouldering much of the tax burden – especially compared to the amount large business pays.
Multinationals, uninationals, and individuals intent on wealth creation focus on tax minimisation because you can never control the vagaries of profit or investment performance, but you can control your tax burden. There are good arguments that there is no such thing as a smart or good investor, only lucky ones, but taxation is law and therefore simple compared to the nightmare complexities of the real world, and can be known and controlled.
A farmer cannot control when or how much it rains. He can use a tax-efficient method to purchase new equipment. The tax not paid is certain, whereas all other things are uncertain.
wreckage
22 Feb 13 at 9:15 pm
Who cares what the imbecile thinks? He’s about to be consigned to the dustbin of Australian political history.
And unsurprisingly, he won’t be missed.
Rabz
22 Feb 13 at 9:15 pm
The greedy bosses and greedy multinationals meme will be flogged to death until the election. That’s all they have left.
Biota
22 Feb 13 at 9:19 pm
Is he in his job to make Maxwell look good?
Driftforge
22 Feb 13 at 9:21 pm
Good job he’s done.
jumpnmcar
22 Feb 13 at 9:22 pm
the optimal tax on income from capital and from capital gains is zero!
Taxes on interest, dividends, and capital are a double taxation of wages income that generated the initial savings that funded the investment.
John Rawls was awake to the power of incentives. he opposed income taxes.
Rawls advocated progressive consumption taxes because these taxed what people take out of the common store of goods rather than what he or she contributes.
Lucas (1990) calculated that a balanced budget abolishing of taxes on income on capital would increase: the capital stock by 60%, consumption by 7%, and welfare by 1% – the last because of the transitional dynamics from the additonal saving.
Jim Rose
22 Feb 13 at 9:26 pm
If the Liberals in the seat of Lindsay had not been distributing leaflets in 2007 that told lies, Bradbury probably wouldn’t now be the member and Gillard would not have had the numbers to form government.
Bradbury is almost certain to lose his seat this time so he’ll say or do anything. But the Liberals have themselves to blame for the fact that he’s there.
DavidLeyonhjelm
22 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
The state should tax the state, and the state alone.
Driftforge
22 Feb 13 at 9:30 pm
Joe Hockey wacked this idiot a bewdy in QT a few weeks ago.
Bradbury – who might end up doing a Bradbury as man most likely at Treasury – was raving on about the Coalition’s economic planning and credibility whereupon Hockey stood, pamphlet in hand: “Madame Speaker, I seek leave to table a pamphlet distributed by the assistant Treasurer’s electorate office announcing the budget has been returned to surplus.”
Leave was not granted.
C.L.
22 Feb 13 at 9:37 pm
There is fraction of a point to what he says – very small & very large business have access to tax breaks that those in the middle do not – if you’re small enough you can just pocket some cash, and if you’re Google or Apple you set up your double Irish Dutch sandwich. But for the intermediate entities, they’re stuck paying tax, which makes them relatively less competitive.
Solution being lower taxes of course.
Tim
22 Feb 13 at 9:43 pm
You seriously wonder how Bradbury passed primary school with comments like that.
Andrew
22 Feb 13 at 9:48 pm
Does he not understand that squeezing multinationals makes them want to, I dunno, leave town?
duncanm
22 Feb 13 at 9:49 pm
Companies like Apple don’t actually make anything in Australia anyway. We’re just a sales office to them. They’ll want to sell stuff in Australia as long as they still make a profit.
Google is different in that they do have some engineers in Australia. But the reason that Google don’t pay almost no tax in Australia is that essentially Australians buy services from an overseas Google entity, not an Australian one. Presumably they arrange transfer pricing so no profit is made by the Australian firm and its all made by their overseas company in a low company tax country. They’d still end up contributing to GST though which is harder to avoid. But in the end as long as they can still make a profit they won’t leave, that part of the company doesn’t make anything here either.
Chris
22 Feb 13 at 10:00 pm
Has this twunt Bradbury ever heard of dividend imputation, or is he just your usual ignorant lefty?
Rococo Liberal
22 Feb 13 at 10:29 pm
high taxes on international mobile capital ending up reducing investment in Australia until the after-tax returns of these investors are the same everywhere.
Jim Rose
22 Feb 13 at 10:32 pm
Tell a lie often enough and the nuff nuffs will believe anything.
Splatacrobat
22 Feb 13 at 10:36 pm
Sprout motherhood statements and empty rhetoric with touchy-feely words and the nuff-nufs will swallow it without question.
Gab
22 Feb 13 at 10:39 pm
tbh
22 Feb 13 at 10:45 pm
Shit, sorry about the block quote fail.
tbh
22 Feb 13 at 10:45 pm
From the annals of Labor idiocy
Bradbury, that well known sailor, and his “coastal” electorate were feeling proud no doubt.
Morons.
Mark
22 Feb 13 at 11:22 pm
What about the taxes paid by the employees they’ve hired here Chris? Does that count? How about the taxes paid by the sales people selling Apple products? Does that count either.
Please stop being an idiot.
Jc
22 Feb 13 at 11:42 pm
There was a story in the us recently about apple only paying 2.5% corporate taxes in the US. But that was 2.5% of all corporate taxes in the US, one company -unbelievable!
Speaking of apple and labor politicians being idiots ed husic is constantly in the news complaining about how much music etc costs here vs the us. Blaming the us tech giants, rather than the govt and its ridiculous copyright laws, what a leech.
Rob
22 Feb 13 at 11:59 pm
There was a story in the us recently about apple only paying 2.5% corporate taxes in the US. But that was 2.5% of all corporate taxes in the US, one company -unbelievable!
Speaking of apple and labor politicians being idiots, ed husic is constantly in the news complaining about how much music etc costs here vs the us. Blaming the us tech giants, rather than the govt and its ridiculous copyright laws, what a leech.
Rob
22 Feb 13 at 11:59 pm
“Taxes on interest, dividends, and capital are a double taxation of wages income that generated the initial savings that funded the investment.” Jim Rose
This can only be construed as double taxation if you do not accept that the investment income constitutes an additional economic gain over and above the initial labour income.
Wealth taxes or taxes on fixed capital value (such as property taxes) could be criticised as involving a degree of double taxation of labour income. That is, if a person earns more than they consume and then saves or invests the difference, the capital value (which essentially represents labour over consumption) is taxed again even if it has not generated additional economic returns (i.e. interest or capital gains). This may involve a degree of double taxation, as the labour income is taxed and then the capital value (i.e. surplus production over consumption) is taxed again.
Really, there are enough sound arguments to be made against socialism and big government. We do not need to resort to this kind of economically illiterate, populist posturing. Never give a chardonnay socialist the slightest excuse to feel intellectually superior to us.
Monkey's Uncle
23 Feb 13 at 12:27 am
Cut&Paste has a superb dig.
Gab
23 Feb 13 at 12:50 am
“And unsurprisingly, he won’t be missed.”
I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list:
Stupid politicians who talk a lot of tosh,
And think that trees are sources of an awful lot of dosh!
I don’t think they’ll be missed; I’m sure they’ll not be missed.
With thanks to Gilbert for Ko-Ko in Mikado.
John A
23 Feb 13 at 8:35 am
John A, your list was made up in the ?open foramen yesterday (I think)
Winston Smith
23 Feb 13 at 10:10 am
Here ya go:
Labors Family Tree.
Here are their names:
Kathy Jackson, Craig Thomson, Michael Williamson, Mark Davis, Greg Combet, George Wright, Lindsay Tanner, Kevin Rudd, Karl Bitar, Mark Arbib, Alexandra Williamson, David Feeney, Liberty Sanger, Nicola Roxon, Josh Bornstein, Peter Slipper, Clyde Holding, Bill Shorten, Stephen Conroy, Kim Carr, Evan Thornley, Jeff Jackson, Tim Lee, Bernadette O’Neill, Struan Robertson, Criselee Stevens, Matthew Burke, Steve Hutchins, Natalie Sykes, Mark McLeay, Katie Hall, Christa Thomson, Zoe Arnold, Tony Sheldon, Sarah Kaine, Chris Williamson, Darren Williamson, Monique Irvine, Cherly McMillan, Marco Bolano, Julie Gillard, Pauline Fegan, Chris Brown, Lloyd Williams, Peter Mylan, Carol Glen, Gerard Hayes.
Winston Smith
23 Feb 13 at 10:24 am