Low wages growth to scuttle return to Budget surplus

Tuesday 17 October 2017

Last week, the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) released report claiming that middle-income earners will bear the burden of bracket creep (aka ‘fiscal drag’) as wage rises push 1.8 million Australians into higher tax brackets.

At the time, I noted that the PBO’s projections around income tax were inflated given they seemed to incorporate the Federal Budget’s wildly optimistic assumptions of a pending wages boom:

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.