Keith Duncan, Pimlico.
Figures released by the ATO state that 600 of Australia’s largest companies pay no tax; one third of people earning more than one million dollars pay little or no tax; wealthy Australians can negatively gear multiple investment properties and pay minimal or no capital gains and income tax. They can also own large share portfolios and amazingly, receive taxpayer funded franking credits.
High-charging tax consultants can be engaged by wealthy people and companies to ensure they pay little or no tax, and in turn their exorbitant fees are also tax deductable. And they have every right to under current Aust. law.
The Turnbull government has attacked small business, superannuants, self-funded retirees and government-funded pensioners (to the point where many are no longer eligible for help with vital medication), families with children, university students struggling to survive and shift workers relying on penalty rates, all because they have a budget out of control.
Now if these two sides of Australian life sound contradictory, it’s because they are: we now have a government that’s declared war on society’s less well off and on the other hand condones unfair tax policy that benefits the big end of town and the super wealthy.
This government inherited a sizeable deficit as a result of the GFC, which saved this country from a damaging recession. Yet within four years of taking office they have irresponsibly managed to treble it, a fact they continually attempt to conceal.
Maybe that banana republic Paul Keating once warned us about is finally about to become a reality.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
