At-a-glance: Coalition's company tax cut pledge

The Coalition has announced a plan to cut the company tax rate by 1.5 percent if they are elected.

The cut from 30 percent to 28.5 percent would take place from July 1, 2015 and would cost the government $5 billion over the budget period.

The tax cut would help offset the Coalition's $4.3 billion paid parental leave scheme.

The Opposition says this plan would be funded by $17b worth of savings outlined in the Coalition's budget-in-reply speech.

In the speech, Tony Abbott outlined $4 billion worth of savings from measures including:

-Cutting public service jobs by 12,000 over two years through natural attrition ($1.75b a year)

-Stopping the government's contribution low income earners' superannuation (under $1b a year)

-Delaying the phased increase in compulsory superannuation from 9 to 12 percent, so that the 12 percent increase is achieved in 2021 rather than 2019 (around $1.1b a year by 2016-17)

-Removing the increase in the humanitarian refugee intake from 13,750 to 20,000 ($500m a year by 2016-17)

-Abolishing the $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation (around $350-450m a year)

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey says the Coalition would find further savings with the proposed scrapping of the carbon and mining tax.

Mr Hockey says the company tax cut will help build a strong economy and grow profits.

Both major parties have talked about cutting the company tax in recent times.

The Labor government in the last parliament proposed cutting the tax by 1 percent, with the offset coming from the mining tax revenue, but the plan failed to gain approval from the Opposition and the Greens.

In a report released last week, the Business Council of Australia recommended that the government prioritise lowering the tax rate to 25 percent when financial conditions are favourable.


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Source: SBS


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