World-class fertiliser producer Incitec Pivot Ltd has painfully written $105m off its Gibson Island plant in Brisbane – squeezed by high gas costs, low Urea prices and bad taxes – just as it enters a major 'shut' to refurbish this key national industrial asset....
BLOG: payroll tax
A Georgist explanation of ‘fiscal devaluation’
Payroll tax is a reverse tariff: an inland payroll tax feeds into prices of locally produced goods and services, including those intended for export, but exempts imported goods and services up to the point of importation. In contrast, a Value-Added Tax (such as...
Want a new GST? Sink the old one!
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...
Not the Queensland Budget Speech
. . . ... Madam Speaker, if the Government is to balance the Budget in these difficult times, it cannot afford to indulge in forms of taxation that shrink the economy from which all public revenue is drawn. In some allegedly “conservative” circles, it has been argued...
Tax reform is hard and dreary work.
photo credit: Cayusa Tax reform is hard for government: losers complain loud and long, while those who will benefit are suspicious and silent. We should be angry as hell about the tax system. It scoops up the earnings of the poor but merely nips at what the wealthy...