Franking credits debate degenerates into propaganda

Could there be a clearer example of fake news: repeating that tax wasn’t paid when clearly it was? This proposal amounts to the opposite of a ‘‘loophole’’. It is an ‘‘artifice’’ to raise the tax rate on company-sourced income. Confiscating this money from retirees (but not from other shareholders), while shifting the focus for unaffected voters – ‘‘anyway we will give the money to schools’’ – is sugar-coating discrimination between equivalent beneficial owners. It undermines property rights…

The reality is that a couple with the median fund could take the median income and just make it to the end of their 80s. Labor’s policy will reduce their income by 15-25 per cent and they will make it only to their mid-80s. The irony is that wealthier people with advisers will avoid all this…