Taxes up 36.2% in five years
The cost of government in Australia rose 36.2% in the last five years. Are services 36.2% better? Is there a price watchdog somewhere ready to do something about this?
The next federal budget is about 3 weeks away. I’ll be hoping for a 36.2% reduction in my annual tax bill. If they abolish personal income tax that will roughly cover it.
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The ABS is a bit short on details, so am I right in thinking this does not account from inflation?
Not that it would make a lot of difference – 36.2% is a lot. Too much by far.
Looks like good material for a bumper sticker for the LDP.
*for* inflation, of course.
I don’t want to be an apologist for the taxman, but…
Wouldn’t the per capita amount increase as employment levels increase?
It seems to have increased aside from that (juding from increase as percentage of GDP), but it’s still a misleading figure by itself.
Here’s a great idea for a t-shirt- “The only good tax… is a dead one!”
I just got my 900 reasons to stimulate the economy. What good books would you suggest, in a libertarian vein?
Terje,
An intriguing aspect to this is the non arrival of my March 2009 BAS statement (dead tree variety) but my accountant went to the ATO website to retrieve it electronically. It was a shocker – my qtr company tax escalated 10 times, but my income went south – unemployed for 3.5 months since January.
Given that I get nothing from the guvmint, used all my savings to survive these last months, only then to be hit with this quasi provisional tax, albeit under a different name, coupled with the increase in government is too much – so folks, welcome to the final arrival of the Fabians and socialist utopia.
I admit I should not have signed the contract last April 2008 to trade in my caravan for a slightly larger one, and I should not have signed the contract to buy a work vehicle to tow it on 7 October 2008, both contracts due last December but no one really predicted the preciptitous market collapse and being at the coal face of the exploration industry, (I am an exploration geologist), we are the first to become unemployed.
Fortunately I am back in work, but I can see the rest of the year being spent paying our larger guvmint’s wastefullness.
What also prompted this post was the interview by some WA bureaucrat reminding Curtin FM listeners that employees have “entitlements”. Not if you are self employed however – no paid annual leave, no paid public holidays, no long service leave, the list could go on ad finitum, but it’s we who are the backbone of the economy – not the rent seekers or those paid by our taxes.
I’ll be hoping for a 36.2% reduction in my annual tax bill.
Yeah right – KRudd’s going to have to raise taxes another 30% to just to cover all this stimulation. They’re even givign alchopos a second go.
Why don’t you run a book on where the extra taxes will come from?
Louis; The only place I can fault you is that us exploration drillers usually go before you guys, but I know the feeling.
That’ll be really stimulating. Not.
I think accounting for inflation the figure is about 19% (or that’s what I got using the ABS inflation calculator). Still ridiculously high.
I quite like the idea of imposing spending restrictions on governments whereby they are not allowed to increase spending by more than inflation + increase in population.
Tim if we had such caps in place then government budgets would actually be about budgeting.
“Australia faces biggest drop in tax revenue since World War II …” – http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,25370354-462,00.html
Of course, a better measure of the “cost of government” is how much they’ve been spending, and that should be up quite a bit.
Wait till we see the numbers.
Jim Fryar,
Yes you are quite correct – the rigs always go first and hence why we then follow them. But I have to go into the field first to peg the holes, which I am doing tomorrow, so I am thus 1/2 right if that is rationally possible, and the rigs follow the geologists, or “rig pigs” as we are affectionally called.
Seems to me like the government should be subject to penalty clauses if they don’t deliver!