Terry McCrann: Cutting business tax makes zero sense
Any thoughts of so-called ‘tax reform’ – which adds up to increasing taxes on individuals to ‘fund’ tax cuts to business – are way, way out there in fantasy land, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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Earth to business lobby groups and assorted salivating economists: there is no – as in zero, nil, nothing, nada – prospect of this or any other federal government raising the GST to hand out tax cuts to business.
Yes, there is more prospect of the government bringing forward the already promised personal tax cuts. We’ll find out when Treasurer Josh Frydenberg brings out his so-called ‘budget update’ next week.
What we will also get is some extension to the (expensive) JobKeeper handout. And we will also get a permanent increase in the JobSeeker (the dole) payment.
All three are appropriate and arguably necessary, especially in the nationwide economy-wrecking virus second wave disaster in Victoria which might be in the process of dragging NSW down into it. Indeed, they link well together.
Any thoughts of so-called ‘tax reform’ – which whatever way you slice it, adds up to increasing taxes on individuals to ‘fund’ tax cuts to business – are way, way out there in fantasy land.
Such tax cuts are both irrelevant and utterly out-of-mind anyway to the very people that the lobbyists/economists think they would be aimed at helping: business and especially SMEs.
The bleeding obvious needs to be stated: a tax cut is only of any value if you are paying tax; and you are only paying tax if you are making a profit. For hundreds of thousands of businesses struggling to survive, they’d just love to be making a tax payment anytime soon.
Plus, I’m sure businesses would be lining up to demand the government increase the GST by 50 per cent – from 10 to 15 per cent – as that would be guaranteed to help consumers buy more of what they are desperately trying to sell. Not.
Have these idiots otherwise known as lobbyists learned anything? Have they just seen anything? How we got four-fifths of five-eighths of copulating-all tax reform through the 2010s when economic conditions were relatively benign and while we still had budget deficits that were nothing like what we now face?
The same goes for the other pie-in-the sky fantasies about replacing payroll taxes or swapping land taxes for property stamp duty.
Originally published as Terry McCrann: Cutting business tax makes zero sense