On Fri, 7 Nov 2014, "Pidgorny, Slav(GPM)" <slav.pidgorny@anz.com> wrote:
It would be also beneficial for the people of Australia to have sales and income taxes comparable to those in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong isn't an independent country, it's a "special administrative region". So it benefits from the protection of the Chinese army while being allowed to have policies that wouldn't necessarily work for the entire country. In the other thread it was suggested that the financial dealings in Luxembourg made a direct comparison with Australia inappropriate. I think that the different economy in Hong Kong and it's political situation regarding China also decreases the relevance of such comparisons. There are a lot of countries that have special tax laws for certain industries. Sometimes these provide real benefits to the country, sometimes it seems that a government just drank the neo-liberal cool-aid. I think that our involvement with organisations such as the WTO should be reviewed. The WTO gives too much power to multinational corporations that can suck money out of countries and leave the average people to pay for it. When companies base their operations in Hong Kong to avoid Australian tax the solution is not to reduce corporate tax in Australia in a false effort at competing. The solution is to tax all companies in an appropriate manner to avoid having people like us left paying for their externalities. Don't think that you are one of the "better off" people that the Liberal party caters for. Your email address shows that you are one of the workers. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/