“You can sleep peacefully once you’ve paid your taxes” — many of those from the post-Soviet region will remember this phrase. At the end of each financial year, right before a calm winter sleep everyone in Australia is filing tax return forms, dealing with deductions and calculations, attempting to write off some of the expenses. Also every three years in the run-up to the elections, everyone engages in the debates about the tax system: how it should be organised and what measures are needed to keep the budget going.
In the second episode of the “Every Vote Matters” series, we will be swimming in money, namely taxes. What are historically the views of different Australian parties on taxation? How do their views affect each individual voter?
Dr. Gennadi Kazakevitch is an economist at Monash University and a regular economic columnist for SBS Russian. Gennady broke down the Australian tax system for us and also elaborated a bit on the issue of the key debates in this matter.
Maxim Ananyev is a research fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research and a host of the Big Questions podcast. Maxim helped us in understanding the ideology behind the tax system in Australia. What is the status quo that major political parties refuse to change? How does this status quo benefit ordinary voters?
First episode of the series:
Election day: Donkey voter for a bellwether seat
