kewpid.net

The treas­ury sec­ret­ary Ken Henry has defen­ded him­self and the gov­ern­ment on its tax reform pro­gress.

The new chair­man of the Busi­ness Coun­cil of Aus­tralia (BCA) has more or less accused the gov­ern­ment of delib­er­ately under­es­tim­at­ing budget rev­enue to limit the urgency of more tax reform.

Though I think the BCA is just a self-serving car­tel of Australia’s largest cor­por­a­tions (a union if you will), he has a point. Peter Costello’s Budget speeches have con­sist­ently under­es­tim­ated the budget sur­plus by a wide mar­gin, and the mid-year eco­nomic reviews have also been pur­pose­fully con­ser­vat­ive. And though tax rates have been nom­in­ally cut in recent years, the Howard gov­ern­ment remains the highest tax­ing, highest spend­ing gov­ern­ment in his­tory. If Cos­tello was CFO of any major busi­ness he’d be a laugh­ing stock.

It’s time the gov­ern­ment raised the tax-free threshold to $20,000 — a fair, pro­gress­ive tax cut for all

Aus­trali­ans. And time for the treas­ury depart­ment to start hir­ing more pres­ci­ent eco­nom­ists; or per­haps just stop lying.The Heart­break Kid dvd