This week’s backdown by the federal labor government on the Mineral Resource Rent Tax will cost Australian taxpayers $35 billion over the next ten years. The shortfall in government revenues will be made up from taxes on work and taxes on business. That means it is...
BLOG: economic rent
Victoria’s Transport Plan a No-Brainer
photo credit: Schaffner Sometimes the ignorance of experts makes my blood boil. Why can’t they do the arithmetic, the sums plainly before them? The Victorian Transport Plan will cost $38 billion and produce benefits of $180 billion, according to a state-commissioned...
Aussie miners: no one likes a whiney child.
photo credit: loungerie The Henry Tax Review recommended a resource rent tax to the Australian government, carefully designed to maintain incentives and reward risk. The miners responded with apoplexy and a campaign of deliberate misinformation that has left the...
The New Resources Tax Reduces Mining Risk.
photo credit: jcarter The Commonwealth of Australia was built on the sound principle natural resources are part of every Australian's endowment. The Henry Tax Review recommended and the Rudd government has accepted a new tax system for mining that builds on this...
Like Gold in a Coal Mine
photo credit: 10b travelling Clear-eyed media commentary in the national interest is rare and sweet. Alan Mitchell's analysis of the Henry Tax Review in the Australian Financial Review - A tax on all your economic rents - is such a creature. He opens with a...
At last, payment for the owners
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...
Six Factors to Flip Negative Gearing into Negative Equity – Someone’s Going to Get Hurt
The Australian Tax Office has released figures on the extent of negative gearing in Australia ahead of the Henry Tax Review. This is no accident. They are preparing the ground for Ken Henry’s changes. The picture drawn is not pretty: it shows the nation’s...
Raising Revenue from Mineral Deposits
photo credit: ToOliver2 Dr Gavin Putland Taken from the Dec - Jan edition of Progress. Download Progress (8MB) If a “site” is a piece of ground or airspace, then the “rent” of the site is simple enough: it is the price per unit time that the highest rational...
Economists Who Dominated the GFC Predictions
photo credit: Stuck in Customs On the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this piece sums up the cause to the GFC, as predicted by 5 economists who subscribe to the line of economic thinking we promote: land rent theory. Dirk Bezener, the academic...