Everywhere one looks, everywhere one reads, there is a call for the wealthy, for business, for everyone but the author/speaker advocating to pay for a fair share of tax.
What I am still waiting to learn is how much is a fair share.
Is it an absolute number? Is it a proportion? How much is?
This lack of (programatic) specificity is however a feature not a fault.
In the interests of disclosure, your humble correspondent is not in the top income tax bracket. However, this same correspondent happens to understand what happens when too much tax is collected. It results in to much governments spending and too much government interference and in an increasingly sclerotic economy.
This fair share nonsense of course is promulgated from the usual sources. Like Christopher Knaus, the “chief investigations correspondent for Guardian Australia.”
Knaus recently wrote that:
Almost a third of Australia’s large companies pay no income tax
Here’s an insight Christopher. They paid no income tax because they did not generate income. Or, as permitted under law, they used prior income losses to offset current income earned for tax purposes.
Such idiotic headlines, missing only the dark music, imply that something untoward is going to. Well Christopher. If you earn no income, should you pay income tax?
Can we please end this nonsense. The problem with Australia, one of the highest taxing countries in the world is that our governments spend too much and not thaey they tax too little. This is particularly the case when Commonwealth, State and Local Government taxes are accounted for.
Australia does not have a taxing problem; it has a spending problem. We are the most over governed country in the western world per head of population. Too many tiers of government which each have their own huge bureaucracies.