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 -...
BLOG: henry review of taxation
Housing Bubble – Don’t Buy Now!
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...
Citizens are entitled to RSPT
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...
Repeal Stamp Duty!
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.
Global financial collapse – what’s happening to us?
Bryan Kavanagh blogs at thedepression.org.au His latest tirade nails rentiers and land speculators. Many attempts to analyse the cause of the GFC contain more than a grain of truth. The vast majority, however, provide no useful hint to a remedy. As the process is...
Psst! Stamp duty can be avoided
As the Fairfax papers reported on April 14, the NSW government has rejected yet another recommendation to replace conveyancing stamp duty by a broad-based land tax. That is the effect of the "stamp duty replacement tax" recommended on page 13-4 of the Lambert...
Now Everyone Hates Stamp Duty
On Monday the Real Estate Institute of Victoria made public its submission to the Victorian Government on the framing of the state budget. They are big-hearted enough to call for an end to the First Home Bonus – a ‘gift’ to buyers that merely inflates land prices by...
What a party; what a hangover!
Asset prices falls come straight off our personal equity, our savings, while liabilities – mainly the home mortgage – are payable in full with interest from after-tax incomes. Returning to – overshooting – the long-term land price average is going to be quite an experience for anyone with big borrowings.
How government policy provides rich pickings for Australia’s billionaires
Philip Soos' latest withering attack on privilege from The Conversation today. Over the last year or so, the Occupy movement has garnered wide attention, with people of all backgrounds gathering to protest the deteriorating social conditions. However, these grievances...
Taxi! Tax Me!
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...