Prosper Australia

Citizens retreat confused when talk turns to Economic Rents. The taxi industry is an excellent example of how assets granted by government create economic rents – at the expense of the wider community. There are 5181 taxi licences in Victoria, of which the Department of Transport’s Victorian Taxi Directorate leases about 1100 licences to operators [...]

Australian land prices are falling. They will continue to fall until their fundamental economic link to incomes and rents are fully restored. Many with large mortgages will be crushed by these towering liabilities when their equity is erased. This claim is bitterly resisted by the politico-housing complex and most homeowners, who see the exponential land [...]

photo credit: DrWurm A term employed in Vagrancy statutes to test whether an individual has any apparent ability to provide for himself or herself financially. The Law frowns upon people who make their living outside formal employment. Yet it bows deep before land and property. Irrational confidence has inflated property prices so far they bear [...]

photo credit: Steve – wants a job at Chester Zoo MELBOURNE and CANBERRA:- Australians had high hopes the Tax Forum would herald the end of taxes that distort and diminish economic activity as Ken Henry recommended. Sadly, these hopes have been dashed, says Prosper Australia. “Citizens are taxed too much – especially the income tax [...]

photo credit: Domiriel Influential SMH Journalist Jessica Irvine today writes about the urgent need for Land Tax to be prioritised in Land is the Best Hope for Fixing the Tax System. The endorsement is requires a complete transcription. Make sure you see the film Real Estate 4 Ransom to investigate these issues further. Land is [...]

photo credit: rubenerd 29 September 2011 MELBOURNE:- Vested interests are determined to stifle reform of the government revenue base at the Tax Forum next week, says Prosper Australia. “The government has lined up industry representatives and lobby peaks – all to plead the special needs of those who pay their salaries. This blatant pandering to [...]

photo credit: h.koppdelaney By Philip Soos This article first appeared at www.theconversation.edu.au and is republished under Creative Commons. One aspect of housing and stock market bubbles continually repeats: the vast majority of economists either miss or deny their existence. In recent years, enormous asset bubbles have burst in many countries. The most notable have been [...]

Dr Gavin Putland of the Land Values Research Group drives a stake through a vampire heart in the Letters page of today’s Australian Financial Review Joanne Seve (Letters, August 5) regurgitates the property lobby’s favourite untruth, namely that land tax is passed on to tenants. In its crudest form, this argument expects the reader to [...]

At this market climax, let me remind all of the risks of compulsive, over-optimistic ambition. In Leo Tolstoys’ tale, ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need?’ written in 1886, a wealthy peasant named Pahlom is told of the rich earth in the land of the Bashkirs beyond the Volga. They are simple folk and he [...]

photo credit: yewenyi “The mismanagement of both the federal tax powers and Australia’s natural assets by the Gillard government is sickening,” Prosper Australia Campaign Manager David Collyer said today. “They are allowing the miners to gouge our country twice.” “Treasury modelling estimated the new mining tax negotiated by the Gillard government will bring in $100 [...]