Category Archives: Tax

Jeremy Hunt’s budget giveaway ‘will act as sweet filling in tax sandwich’

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Thinktank says juicy cuts this year follow far bigger increases in 2023 and precede planned ‘chunky rises’

Jeremy Hunt’s expected pre-election giveaway budget will be sandwiched between £20bn of tax increases already implemented and a further £17bn of hikes pencilled in for after polling day, a thinktank has said.

The Resolution Foundation said it expected Hunt to freeze fuel duty and cut income tax on 6 March but warned the chancellor’s “tax sandwich” was based on the “fiscal fiction” of £30bn of spending cuts in the next parliament.

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Hastie’s defence comments ‘unhinged and misleading’, Conroy says – as it happened

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Ex-cyclone Lincoln could gather strength and redevelop

A massive storm that lashed the Top End with heavy rain could gather strength and redevelop into a tropical cyclone, AAP reports.

We’ve seen all the leaders of major parties say they take on board and accept in the recommendations … but it appears very little has changed on the ground. We still have unlimited and unmonitored alcohol consumption in Parliament House and in the workplace.

That’s why I put to the prime minister random testing could be introduced. Because we know from – even from driving, it’s a deterrent. As soon as you have a risk of getting caught, it changes behaviour.

People have had enough of politicians thinking there’s different standards that apply to them in Parliament House than what applies in other workplaces.

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Albanese signs WA GST pledge on reporter’s arm and signals possible support for state’s nickel miners

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PM says federal government will make ‘no changes’ to Western Australia GST payments, which could hit $50bn over a decade

The federal government is considering “time-limited support” for the nickel industry in Western Australia as it faces growing international competition from Indonesian producers, Anthony Albanese has said.

The prime minister also pledged to maintain WA’s lucrative share of GST payments by signing a promise on a newspaper front page and on a reporter’s arm in marker pen, before encouraging the journalist to get it tattooed on his body.

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Australia news live: Taylor Swift shows to go ahead at Sydney Olympic Park after no asbestos found – as it happened

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NSW environment watchdog gives venue green light after tests; agency says schools at Marsden Park and Orchard Hill found to have mulch containing bonded asbestos. This blog is now closed

Asked about the Barnaby Joyce incident and “issues of alcohol in Parliament House”, Chandler-Mather says the public is right to expect “a high standard for politicians”, even though they “don’t always deliver”.

Look, personally, in general I don’t think drug testing and alcohol testing in any workplace is necessarily a good idea. People are justifiably upset at the standard politicians hold themselves to.

When we talk about immigrants, we’re talking about the nurses and teachers, construction workers. Secondly, we saw during Covid net migration reached near zero and house prices continue to … go up. Property is treated as a massive speculative asset that drives up the price of housing.

I want to be clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country. We don’t have the political will to take on a housing system and property developers who restrict supply to make money for themselves and treat housing as a huge speculative asset.

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Keir Starmer paid £99,400 in UK tax on £404,000 of earnings, Labour reveals

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Details about leader’s finances for 2022-23 come after Rishi Sunak revealed he paid more than £508,000 of tax on £2.2m plus

Keir Starmer paid £99,431 in UK tax on earnings of £404,030 last year, according to a summary released by the Labour party.

The Labour leader’s tax summary for 2022-23 was published a week after Rishi Sunak’s, which revealed the prime minister paid more than £508,208 in UK tax last year on earnings of just over £2.2m.

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BoM issues cyclone alert for NT and Queensland; NSW Health warns of high-dose MDMA tabs in circulation – as it happend

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Heavy rainfall is expected to hit the Gulf of Carpentaria coast with a risk of a possible tropical cyclone from Thursday. This blog is now closed

Not everyone voted to bring Julian Assange back to Australia

Looking at the Hansard, it seems there were 11 MPs who abstained from voting on the Assange motion:

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Commuter chaos as wild weather leaves half of Melbourne’s train lines offline – as it happened

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Today is the 16th anniversary of Rudd’s national apology

It is National Apology Day, which marks the anniversary of the day the former prime minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised to Indigenous people for the stolen generations.

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Australia politics live: flight chaos across country after air traffic controller no-shows, Senate told; Linda Reynolds announces retirement

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Airservices Australia were grilled in Senate estimates after nationwide flight disruptions due to the missing staff. Follow the day’s news live

Dutton says Liberals will bin ‘right to disconnect’ if they win next election

Switching gears now – Peter Dutton has vowed to scrap the “right to disconnect” if the Liberal party wins the next election. Last week, Dutton told Sky News:

If you think it’s OK to outsource your industrial relations or your economic policy to the Greens, which is what the prime minister is doing, then we are going to see a continuation of the productivity problem in our country.

And as the Reserve Bank governor pointed out, if you don’t address it you’ll see interest rates continue to climb or you’ll see them stay higher for longer.

We’ve been overwhelmed by positive feedback from people who say - yeah, it’s not right that I should be on call 24/7 when I’m not getting paid for it.

And Peter Dutton wants you electronically bound to your boss, and having to answer calls 24/7, even if you’re not getting paid for it.

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‘Pressure works’: Greens to stall Labor housing bill in campaign to limit negative gearing

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System is ‘stacked against renters and first-home buyers’ and government must change its position on negative gearing and capital gains tax, Greens say

The Greens are threatening to impede passage of the government’s “help-to-buy” housing scheme, as they seek to force Labor into winding back tax breaks on investment properties.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, on Sunday said the government had no plans to change negative gearing, as attention shifted to other areas of tax reform after the government’s amendments to stage-three income tax cuts.

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Rishi Sunak paid effective tax rate of 23% on £2.2m income last year

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Low capital gains rate and US location of funds mean tax bill of £508,000 much less than under top income rate of 45%

Rishi Sunak paid more than half a million pounds in tax in 2023 after making a £1.8m profit on his holding in a US investment fund, a summary of his tax affairs shows.

The prime minister published the document on Friday, showing he paid a tax bill of £508,308 in the financial year 2022-23 on overall earnings and gains of £2.23m.

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Local authority leaders criticise Sunak’s call for ‘restrained’ council tax rises

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Prime minister’s comments ‘remarkable’ given government cuts to town hall funding in England, say LGA bosses

Council leaders in England have criticised Rishi Sunak for demanding that local authorities show “restraint” in putting up council tax bills, saying the government is to blame for underfunding.

The prime minister on Friday called for authorities to be “restrained in the council tax rises they put in place”, saying it was “incumbent on local councils to be respectful of the demands on people’s family budgets”.

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Australia politics live: PNG PM James Marape praises legacy of Gough Whitlam in historic address to parliament

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Marape hails Whitlam for ‘hearing the cries of the founding fathers of Papua New Guinea for our own self-determination’. Follow the day’s news live

David Littleproud continued:

But there needs to be greater architectural reform, which is also what Professor Fels articulated, which is what the Nationals have said. When there’s too much market concentration, you have too much power.

And all we’re saying is that whether it is in the supermarket [or farm gate], we want fair prices from the farm gate to the supermarket gate.

I think that he demonstrated the need and reinforced what the Nationals have been calling for, when there’s evidence, clear evidence around price gouging.

We saw that with meat prices where farm grade prices dropped by 60% or 70% in June. Yet, the checkout price only dropped by 18%. They put pressure all the way down through the supply chain. And what Allan Fels has said in his inquiry is that we need to have more ACCC price investigations, where there’s clear evidence. And that’s what we were calling for and the government ignored that. And I think shoppers have paid too much.

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Australia politics live: army to hire UK military helicopters to fill Taipan gap; PNG PM coming to Canberra

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The ‘Juno’ training helicopters will support essential training for aircrew before the arrival of new Black Hawks from the US later this year. Follow the day’s news live

The ADF expects that the training helicopters will be available for operations in Oakey in Queensland by around the middle of this year.

The government will argue these helicopters have been chosen because they can perform a variety of roles “including personnel and equipment transport and Defence assistance to the civil community”.

We need a highly capable Army. When the tough but necessary decision was made last year to expedite the withdrawal of the MRH-90s from service, it meant that we needed to look at all options when it came to filling the capability gap and the training which our servicemen and women need.

We have been working with the United States and United Kingdom on ways in which we can bridge this gap, and their support and willingness with the acceleration of the Black Hawks and leasing of training helicopters will have a significant impact.

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Birmingham given go-ahead to raise council tax by up to 10%

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Michael Gove approves exceptional rise for UK’s biggest local authority, affecting 1m people, and three other bankrupt councils

Council tax in Birmingham is likely to increase by up to 10% after the government allowed the local authority to bypass the national cap without the need for a local referendum.

The increase will affect more than 1 million people in the UK’s largest local authority, which declared itself effectively bankrupt last year due to a £300m budget gap.

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Australia politics live: Coalition votes to back Labor’s changes to stage-three tax cuts

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PM says opposition ‘tying themselves in knots’ as parliament resumes. Follow the day’s news live

School funding data

(continued from previous post)

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News live: Australian government ‘appalled’ by Yang Hengjun’s suspended death sentence, Wong says

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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says ‘Australia will not relent in their advocacy for justice’ for Dr Yang. Follow the day’s news live

Finance minister Katy Gallagher was asked about the Grattan Institute research (we had this earlier in the blog) showing that a third of households don’t pay tax and therefore miss out on the benefits.

Will the government consider raising jobseeker?

I think the treasurer and I have made it clear that every budget, we look at all aspects of expenditure across government, that would include looking at our payments and looking at our services … I think the PM committed to that before the election, this is something that we keep under consideration. It has to be balanced up with all of the other competing pressures where people want additional spending as well.

I think people are up for a rational and reasonable discussion… We made this decision based on putting people before politics.

I’m sure there’ll be others that will write things about [this] in future, but that hasn’t been something that we’ve been conscious of, it really has been about what we can do to help people – particularly those that have been feeling the crunch from the interest rate increases.

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Climate groups welcome fuel efficiency standards – as it happened

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Labor tried to amend stage-three tax cuts, Albanese says

Anthony Albanese says Labor attempted to amend the stage-three tax cuts but its proposal failed by a single vote:

What we did in the parliament in 2019 is two things. One, we tried to amend our the stage-three tax cuts. We weren’t successful. We failed by just one vote. When that occurred, we thought that we weren’t prepared to stand in the way of all of the government to say they knew what the economy would look like in five years’ time.

One of the things, David, I have done is go to the National Press Club – and say we have changed our position. Why? We listened to people and particularly low- and middle-income Australians are under financial pressure.

What I can’t do as prime minister of Australia is to wring my hands and say, “If only there was something I co-do about it” What we needed to do was to look at what is the best way we can take pressure off cost of living without putting pressure on inflation.

We want it to be passed as soon as possible. Certainly, it needs to be passed during this existing session, so as to provide that easy transition for employers, the tax office, for others as well.

Circumstances have changed. We’ve responded.

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Liberal MPs split on support for Labor’s stage-three tax cut changes

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Party room divides as some keen to allow new plan while others want to keep up attack on government’s ‘broken promise’ and warn against falling into a ‘trap’

Liberal MPs are split on whether to support the Labor government’s stage-three tax changes, with some angling to oppose the legislation even as leader Peter Dutton signals the opposition may not stand in the way of larger refunds for millions of Australians.

Julian Leeser has urged his colleagues to oppose the tax changes, while Keith Wolahan warned against falling into a “trap” set by the government. Dutton said the opposition would push for lower taxes, a statement some see as an inclination to wave through the changes, but the view is not universal inside the Liberals ahead of a crucial party room meeting in Canberra next week.

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ACCC to investigate supermarket sector – as it happened

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BoM issues wind weather warning for Tasmania

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds in parts of Tasmania.

Australia has a very important role to play as a signatory to the ICJ, a signatory to the genocide convention, to ensure the protection of Palestinian civilians and ensure that the investigations that are occurring with UNRWA … don’t inhibit funding and delivery of services that are going to basically save lives in coming days and weeks and months.

UNRWA has done the right thing in standing down the staff, sacking them. They have got an independent investigation occurring. 150 UN UNRWA staff have been killed, their families and children as well, over the past several months of this conflict. The UN is in the middle, sandwiched in the conflict, trying to do its best to save lives. Donor governments like Australia need to bear this in mind that, if funding ceases, there is nowhere else to turn to. People will simply collapse and die.

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New Zealand to be briefed on Aukus – as it happened

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The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is speaking to ABC RN, and says news that the inflation rate has plunged to a two-year low of 4.1% is “welcoming, encouraging progress”.

… We know that people are still under pressure and we need to not be complacent about it. We need to continue to work as we have with our three point plan, having the surplus, making sure we deal with cost of living pressures without putting pressure on inflation, and dealing with … supply-chain issues as well.

With parliament resuming next week, this is a wake-up call that 2024 is the last chance for meaningful democratic reform ahead of the 2025 election …

Australians should go to the next election with strict political donation disclosure laws, truth in political advertising laws in force and information about who’s meeting ministers made public as a matter of course.

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