Prosper Australia

15 May 2013 MELBOURNE:- Yesterday’s federal budget highlights again Australia’s unbalanced reliance on wage and salary taxation for government revenues, says Prosper Australia. “Taxation discourages. That is why we tax gambling, alcohol and tobacco. Unfortunately, it has the same effect on work. We tax it so heavily it must also be a very bad economic [...]

by Bryan Kavanagh AAPI Today’s Victorian API news demonstrates the Australian Property Institute is at risk of losing its way: “Property taxes shoulder Vic budget The Victorian government is becoming addicted to property taxes, which will raise over $6 billion in forward estimates for the 2013-14 Victorian State Budget.” [My emphasis] The phrase  “becoming addicted to property [...]

  A fact-free defence of urban planners in The Conversation yesterday has left me fuming about how this group is immersed in process and blind to The Game being played around them. The Game boosts land prices, creates serviced land shortages and impoverishes all who need shelter. Planners are proud to quickly turn around conforming applications.  [...]

Changing the GST was always intended to be hard and is getting harder by the week. Under the so-called intergovernmental agreement on implementation of the GST, any change in the rate or the base required the unanimous approval of the Federal, State and Territory governments. Although that “agreement” can be unilaterally abrogated by Canberra, neither [...]

Independent MP Rob Oakshott stepped into the media spotlight yesterday saying both the Coalition and Labor want to raise the GST rate – after the election. Sadly, he is correct. ”It shouldn’t just be about the GST. This is about why on earth in Australia we have insurance taxes at all. Why do we still [...]

15 November 2012 The mining investment boom that carried Australia though the Global Financial Crisis is declining rapidly and new engines of growth are urgently needed to steer around the ‘Controlled Depression’ that is driving the world into a spiral of misery – country by country. “Tax reform is something we can do by ourselves, [...]

David Collyer’s edited presentation from our Northcote Town Hall event earlier this year. With a jump in job losses last quarter, stock levels at near record levels, land supply in abundance and over 90,000 vacant properties here in Melbourne, one wonders how long Negative Gearing investors can hold these properties empty in lieu of capital [...]

PM Gillard’s defiant speech to the Minerals Council of Australia yesterday – asserting national ownership of our mineral wealth and the country’s right to a share of the bounty being dug up and shipped out – was good politics, good economics and a much needed assertion that government makes the decisions, not the wealthy. But [...]

Buying a home is a major life-event. Most people need a mortgage to bridge the gap between their savings and house prices. But the Victorian government imposes Stamp Duty at this critical point, increasing the capital needed and lengthening mortgage repayments by an average seven years. Many citizens are either excluded or deterred from home ownership by this extra cost, which traps them in the rental market. We are all diminished.

There is a better way. Remove this burden and fund the change by ending the principal residence exemption from State Land Tax an efficient and just way to fund government.