Hockey has another go at untangling tax

Treasurer Joe Hockey has sought to give his coalition colleagues a clear budget message before plunging into the murkier depths of the taxation system.

Tax review. Here we go again.

Five years on from the last review - that resulted in little change - Joe Hockey is having another go at untangling Australia's overly-complex system.

The treasurer starts the process next week with release of a white paper that will lay out the taxes we pay now and what challenges loom over the next 40 years or so.

The review is a key coalition commitment from the 2013 election campaign that included a promise to take any changes to the next election, likely in late 2016.

Improving the integrity of the tax system is also one of several key aims for Hockey's second budget on May 12.

The treasurer armed his coalition colleagues for a six-week break from parliament with a broad outline of what he hopes to achieve in this budget and the all-important pre-election budget next year.

It followed confusing messages in the past few weeks - some might say since the 2014 budget - which prompted Hockey to illustrate his strategy with a slideshow presentation during a meeting of government MPs this week.

He says the budget is still on track to return to surplus - as described in December's mid-year budget review - despite a weaker global economic outlook, a collapse in the iron ore price and the impact of the Senate still sitting on $30 billion of measures from last year.

He promised all new spending would be offset by responsible and fair savings and the budget bottom line would improve each and every year.

The government will build a stronger economy through childcare reform, infrastructure investment and the recently secured free trade agreements.

There will also be a small business package, the centrepiece of which will be a 1.5 per cent tax cut and the possibility of other tax breaks for companies and sole traders who only pay income tax.

The coalition went to the 2013 election promising a 1.5 per cent cut in the corporate tax rate to 28.5 per cent for all businesses.

However, that was planned to coincide with a 1.5 per cent levy on the nation's top 3000 companies to pay for the now defunct paid parental leave scheme.

It's still not clear whether that levy will be re-labelled for something else, such as a new childcare and family package.

We have been here before.

The Rudd government planned an incremental cut in the company tax to 28 per cent in response to the 2010 Henry Tax review recommendation for a 25 per cent rate over time.

However, the promise was slowly whittled away as a new mining tax that was meant to pay for it was proposed.

In the face of coalition opposition to a new tax paying for a tax cut elsewhere, the idea of a corporate tax cut was dropped altogether and was replaced by several other business tax concessions, such as accelerated depreciation of business assets.

In the end the mining tax - vastly different from what the tax review conducted by former Treasury secretary Ken Henry had envisaged - proved to be a dud.

It was ditched by the Abbott government, as were the business tax concessions that went with it because the budget couldn't afford them.

Yet one year on and accelerated depreciation could be back again as part of the small business package.

It almost makes you feel giddy.


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Source: AAP


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