Josh “L-plate Treasurer” Frydenberg is out again today in pursuit of Labor tax policies, at The Australian:
According to the most recent ATO data of 2015-16, there were 416,000 individual tax payers on the top marginal rate who contributed 30 per cent of the total personal income tax take.
According to Treasury, this number will increase to 580,000 this financial year and 820,000 in 2024-25, which by then will see those on the top rate pay 36 per cent of total personal income tax collected.
At 49 cents in the dollar, Australia’s top marginal rate is above the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand and is one of the highest rates in the world.
This ratio affects our international competitiveness and our ability to attract and retain the best and brightest.
Under Labor, this ratio worsens, sending our country backwards.
Does it? Only if you believe in such fairies at the bottom of the garden as “trickle down” economics. If you’re so rich as to make these levels of elite then your tax rate won’t matter at all to your investment choices.
The US and UK are not suffering from an excess of investment. They are suffering from a dearth of aggregate demand, owing in part to massive wealth imbalances arising from, you guessed it, under-taxed wealthy classes that simply can’t spend such a concentration of wealth no matter how hard they try.
When you combine this with the L-plate Treasurer’s other recent complaint about negative gearing reform, all he is doing is defending the same system of rich rorting that will take us down precisely the same path. He wants higher house prices and more foreign capital to fund them with the rich creamin’ it on top. This is the same depressing national vision that has taken us to the edge of calamity with a publicly-funded housing bubble and hollowing out of productive investment.
It is also the very reason why we are seeing politics fracture worldwide as ignored working classes get jack of lying in the trickle down wet spot. The L-plate Treasurer is completely out of step with the mood for change sweeping the globe.
While the L-plate Treasurer is stuck in a time warp, Labor’s tax vision is much fairer, economically constructive and in favour of the national interest.
