On Fri, 7 Nov 2014, Davor Balder <dbalder@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
As a side note… what are the benefits of GST to the people of Australia?
Before the GST was introduced there was a lot of sales tax fraud. The way GST works is that if you run a business that is registered for GST then you have to pay the ATO the GST on goods and services that you provide but you get a rebate on the GST that was applied to anything that you buy. If a large portion of the value of items you sell is comprised of the buy price (a computer store is the best example of that) then the net GST will be quite small (IE the GST you pay and put on the receipts is only slightly more than the GST that you deduct). With the GST the tax is applied at every step, so if one business in the chain dodges the tax then the amount of government revenue lost is small. Also as every link in the chain (apart from non-GST registered end users) reports the GST on what they buy the sellers will be more hesitant to dodge the tax. Now businesses like Kogan avoid GST legally by selling items that cost less than $1000 from a "subsidiary" in Hong Kong. When the Galaxy S3 was new I bought one for myself and one for a relative, both came from Hong Kong with separate receipts so that the bill was less than $1000 and exempt from GST. Kogan's price advantage over other companies relies on avoiding GST. I think it would be better for the people of Australia if the GST threshold for imports was reduced to $300. On Fri, 7 Nov 2014, "Pidgorny, Slav(GPM)" <slav.pidgorny@anz.com> wrote:
I don't think that increasing taxes on the better off indefinitely is going to work in the long run.
Fortunately taxes don't need to be increased indefinitely, they just need to be increased to cover government spending. One thing that could be done is to reduce government spending. The government could spend more on public transport (that is relatively cheap) and less on roads (which are very expensive). The government could refrain from getting involved in military adventures, I think that our military should only be used for defensive purposes. The government could also try to allocate money for preventative measures, EG spending money on childhood health issues and providing a less polluted environment to avoid health care costs later on. Another thing that could be done is to provide quality education that is cheap or free. People who are well educated now will pay more income tax in 10 years... Right wing politicians talk about running a country like a company. But their political ideas are just bad business. No responsible CEO would plan for short term profits by cutting off the potential for long term profits. But that's how Abbott et al want to run a country. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/