Tax churches, legalise weed, balance budget

The Australian Sex Party yesterday put forward a $5 billion budget plan that does not involve increasing taxes on working families and small businesses.

Sex Party President and Victorian Senate candidate, Fiona Patten, said that Australia needed a new broom to sweep away decades of conditioned thinking on funding budgets and that new streams of finance lay just beneath the surface of the nation’s economy, like hidden seams of gold.

She called on both major parties to implement taxation and regulation of marijuana in Australia and said that later in the campaign she would reveal costings and revenue forecasts for a regulatory scheme that would raise over $2 billion a year in tax revenue.

‘The US states of Colorado and Washington have recently taxed and regulated marijuana to their great benefit’, she said. ‘Uruguay has also recognised the benefits of this scheme and has started the same process.’

Ms Patten said she would also reveal details of a scheme to tax religious institutions in Australia that would net a bare minimum of $3 billion dollars in its first year, rising to $10 billion.

’A conservative estimate is that income tax exemptions alone to churches and religious organisations cost taxpayers nearly $20 billion a year. Add to that GST concessions, exemptions from capital gains tax (on property and share trading), the Fringe Benefits Tax Exemption and the cost to tax payers is staggering.’

’We need to do away with the old fashioned notion that religious businesses shouldn’t pay their fair share of taxation, just because they claim to be advancing the cause of religion’, she said. ‘Religion is on the nose and being examined by a Royal Commission. People are asking how can institutions like this get away without paying tax like everyone else has to. This will be a popular tax’.