photo credit: Sushanta Meh Letter to the Editor – AFR 31/08/2010 Gavin R. Putland, Melbourne Instead of prosecuting small businesses for making mistakes with capital gains tax concessions (“Tax Office hits small business”, AFR, August 30), why not abolish the concessions and use the extra revenue to lighten the compliance burdens concerning personal income tax [...]
photo credit: Catherinette Rings Steampunk Letter to the Editor – AFR 26/08/2010 Gavin R. Putland, Melbourne The High Court of Australia’s decision to strike down the Cadia copper royalties — on the ground that the NSW Government didn’t own the copper — is a vindication of Treasury secretary Ken Henry’s proposal for a federal resource [...]
photo credit: ~Brenda-Starr~ Letter to the Editor – AFR 25/05/2010 Bryan Kavanagh, Glen Waverley Ross Garnaut and Ken Henry are undoubtedly correct about the benefits of the so-called super-profits ‘tax’ on miners. It’s actually a resource rent and acts vastly differently from a tax. Where taxes notoriously fine and destroy industry and production, natural resource [...]
photo credit: Hexadecimal Time Letter to the Editor – Aust Financial Review Dr Terry Dwyer (Read Dr Dwyer’s Henry Review Submission) The Henry Tax Review has rightly acknowledged the fundamental economic principle that a tax on land (including resource) rents is the ultimate non-distorting tax. Whether a resource rent tax is the best way to [...]
photo credit: pfala Letter to the Editor THE AGE, MAY 4: Bryan Kavanagh, Glen Waverley WHEN an owner leases out his or her former business as a going concern, i.e. the freehold and the business, it is not uncommon for the net profit before income tax and depreciation to be split equally between the landlord [...]
I had a letter published in The Sunday Age on the 25th of May. Real estate agents and their constant spruiking of the “boom” had finally gotten up my nose. They go around crowing about the rising prices while ordinary Australians get priced out of the market. When you really think about it who benefits [...]
photo credit: Darco TT Letter to the Editor Crikey E-Newsletter Dr. Gavin R. Putland, Director, Land Values Research Group, Prosper Australia, writes: Re. “Kevin, will that be two terms, or four?” (yesterday, item 16). No, Nicholas Gruen, don’t cap negative gearing, because no matter how generous the cap is, the speculators will still scream about [...]
photo credit: aphasiafilms Letter to the Editor David Collyer Balwyn THANK YOU, Tim Colebatch, for your clear-eyed review of our hopelessly distorted housing market (”Housing at these prices will leave us all a heavy debt to bear”, Comment, 23/3). Your solution – to quarantine negative gearing – invites the property spivs to (again) deafen us [...]
photo credit: mugley Letter to the Editor David Barkly Nunawading Speculators have excelled themselves with their land banking. A realistic flat-rate land tax would discourage speculation. It would be equitable because land values rise due to community action, including the provision of infrastructure such as railways, roads, public buildings and other facilities, not through the [...]
You’ve got to love real estate spruikers. They are so consistent and always so wrong. David Morrell purports to be a buyers’ advocate. On 5th March in The Age he was saying how you can’t go wrong with “land banking” in Toorak. Well maybe. Land banking is the quite revolting activity of buying up desirable [...]