From the ABC:
Mr Gylls has told the state conference it will also be the engine for jobs growth.
After earlier flagging potential payroll tax relief for business, he told the conference delegates revenue from the mining tax would be used to lift the payroll tax threshold for small and medium businesses from the current level of $850,000 to $5 million.
The measure would initially be in place for two years, and would cost $880 million.
He also announces a program of “kickstart” grants for small business to encourage employment, forecast to cost $20 million over two years.
“The 1960s production rental which has never been upgraded, if we can upgrade it to $5, we can fund the most substantial in businesses most hated tax, in WA history,” he said.
Mr Grylls also told the conference he not only wanted to establish a new revenue source, he wanted to quarantine it from the current system of redistribution through the Commonwealth Grants Commission.
He wants no repeat of the mining booms years when billions of GST revenue raised in WA was allocated to others states.
There’ll be no quarantining nor should there be. The GST and resource tax issues are separate. The big miners should pay more tax. WA was not remotely ripped off during the boom. The tax cuts are not a bad idea for a state that epitomises Dutch disease but it should not linked to the levy either. Given the rationale for increasing the royalty is that iron ore is a non-renewing state-owned resource and therefore inter-generational equity justifies higher taxes, spending the proceeds now undermines its main purpose.
WA’s great mis-manager wants no part of it:
THE war between the Barnett Government alliance partners has escalated, with Treasurer Mike Nahan dismissing the Nationals’ plan for payroll tax deductions.
Dr Nahan and business leaders dismissed WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls’ plan to impose a new tax on big iron ore miners to fund an increase in payroll exemptions for businesses from $850,000 a year to $5 million.
Nahan is the man responsbile for the WA black hole so he should be dismissed by all. Ironically, Grylls is his only hope of keeping his job.
Meanwhile, from Paul Murray:
When he started out on this escapade, Grylls offered it as a panacea to WA’s raw deal on the GST which has heightened the Barnett Government’s Budget problems.
But it’s become clear in recent days that the GST itself is the fatal flaw in his plan.
Typical of his approach to the government alliance, Grylls began by throwing the problem back on his Liberal partners.
On September 15 he challenged the WA Liberals in the Federal Parliament to use their bloc of votes to deliver a fair result for the State on the GST.
…Advance a month and Grylls is confronted with the fact that under the Commonwealth Grants Commission rules — which show no sign of ever being changed by the other States — his new mining tax revenues would result in WA getting further big cuts to its GST payments.
As Labor’s shadow treasurer Ben Wyatt is well aware judging by his Twitter comments criticising Grylls this week, all this hare-brained scheme could achieve is a two-year sugar hit until the lag in the CGC process caught up and WA was again penalised.
Undeterred, Grylls has now turned his guns on his own party to fix the yawning GST hole in his policy.
The two policies are not linked. WA is in Australia. Higher rightful WA tax revenue benefits all states.
Every argument in this debate, for and against, is a self-interested crock.
