Brendan Coates, Grattan Institute Want more to retire on?In its long-awaited final report on the efficiency and competitiveness of Australia’s leaky superannuation system, Australia’s Productivity Commission
BRENDAN COATES, GRATTAN INSTITUTEIt’s conventional wisdom that Australians don’t save enough for retirement.
At last, an end to the Reserve Bank’s two-year freeze on interest rates is in sight. But not this year, and not because of particularly high wage growth.
If women were to be taxed differently to men, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Treasurer Scott Morrison says the idea is absurd.
“You don’t fill out pink forms and blue forms on your tax return. It doesn’t look at what your gender is any more than it looks at whether you are left-handed or right-handed,” he said last week.
He even said, wrongly, that Labor has been suggesting it.
But such a move has happened before.
Here’s how you can tell the Productivity Commission was spot-on in its assessment of the superannuation system.
Not a single part of the industry, not one, has explicitly endorsed its key recommendation.
That’s because it is intended to help us: users of superannuation who depend on the industry.
Suddenly we’ve wised up. As far back as any of us can remember, all the way back to the beginning of income tax, we’ve been easy to bribe.
Here’s how it has worked in every election and in almost every budget: “You’ve been working hard and paying too much tax. We feel your pain. We’ve magically found some money from somewhere. We’re pulling a tax cut out of a hat. You can thank us later.”
A “humongous” lift in Australia’s tax take has put the Turnbull government in the best position to deliver personal income tax cuts in nine years.
The Coalition wasn't merely asleep at the wheel when it came to the practices being exposed at the banking royal commission: it pulled out all stops to allow some of them to continue, including attempting to circumvent the will of parliament, in an extraordinary 12-month burst of activity that began within weeks of its election.
