OECD secretary general Mathias Cormann has criticised the standard of debate over Australia’s tax system, which he said largely amounts to twiddling around the edges every few years to manage bracket creep.

Rather than tackling a broader set of changes to spur incentives and ensure sufficient revenue for government, the country now faces one of the highest levels of reliance on income taxes, which will reach a record level in coming years regardless of debates “over so-called tax cuts of stage one, two or three”, Mr Cormann said.