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 and 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 Australian 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 a Medicare card to 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 that saved this country from a damaging recession, and within four years of taking office 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.
