Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims delivered a keynote address to The Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit, where he called for a super profits tax on resources companies to be reintroduced.
Sims contends that the economic logic for taxing resource rents is “impeccable” and is vital to ensuring equity and budget sustainability:
Australia has likely maxed out on raising corporate or personal taxes. We are already heavily reliant on these two taxes as they amount to more than 70% of our tax revenue, and high tax rates encourage unfortunate behaviour to minimise tax as Australian rates are generally higher than those levied overseas, or can become a disincentive to effort…
