The Turnbull government may be becoming increasingly vague as to what it intends to do on tax reform, but business and unions have tried to reignite the process.
The Business Council of Australia wants lower personal and company income tax rates which would help to boost the economy by billions of dollars over the next decade.
In a new discussion paper it calls for the company tax rate to be cut immediately from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent for all businesses - not just small firms - and a further reduction to 25 per cent over the next five years.
It says there must be an initial focus on low and middle income earners who are affected by bracket creep, who will be pushed into higher tax brackets just through wage inflation.
"Australia is talking about the tax system because it is one controllable factor in a volatile, unpredictable global economy," the council's president Catherine Livingstone says, presenting the paper to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.
She said taxation can either accelerate or impede growth.
"In our case it is increasingly an impediment with an unsustainably high personal income tax burden and an uncompetitive company income tax rate."
Cutting the company tax rate would boost the economy by $9 billion over the next decade and budget revenues by $2 billion, the council says.
In a separate paper, the ACTU calls for a reduction in generous tax concessions and deductions, such as negative gearing, capital gains tax and the treatment of superannuation that benefits the wealthy.
It wants to introduce a "fair tax contribution" that would ensure rich individuals pay a minimum amount of tax and a greater transparency of tax reporting by companies with an annual turnover of more than $100 million while reducing the complexity of state and federal taxes.
"Our current tax system is simply not fair and needs to be fixed," ACTU president Ged Kearney says.
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said Labor has clearly led the tax debate with plans to roll back capital gains tax discount, and negative gearing and super tax concessions.
"After two and half years in office, and six months of a new prime minister and treasurer, here we are on the eve of a budget and an election and we still have a government with no economic leadership or a tax policy to speak of," he told AAP.
