Posted: 8:00 am on 13th May 2012
It is just a little more than two years since the review of Australia’s Future Tax System (AFTS, better known as the Henry review) was released to the public, with its 138 recommendations. The Gillard government, notwithstanding its enthusiastic embrace of an audacious 40% resources super profits tax at that time, was lukewarm about the Henry package as a whole. Eager to burnish its economic reform credentials, the government now…
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Posted: 8:00 am on 12th May 2012
The federal government’s stated motivation for returning the budget to surplus next financial year is to give the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) ‘maximum room to move’ on interest rates. Yet a fiscal contraction is no more effective in restraining the economy than a fiscal expansion is effective in stimulating it. In an open economy with a floating exchange rate and an inflation-targeting central bank, changes in fiscal policy do…
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Posted: 9:36 am on 7th May 2012
Although the contents of the 2012 Budget are unknown at the time of writing, we have been led to expect that one revenue-raising measure will be a doubling of the concessional rate of tax from 15% to 30% on superannuation contributions by individuals earning $300,000 or more. These comprise the top 1% or so of income tax payers. It is ironic that this latest fiscal mugging of high income earners…
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Posted: 8:00 am on 21st April 2012
Monetary policy has recently come in for criticism from a number of quarters. Paul Howes of the Australian Workers’ Union said, ‘the Reserve Bank has made the wrong call consistently’ and called for its charter to be changed. The only relevant test for monetary policy is inflation outcomes. The ‘core’ measures of inflation that best predict future inflation have been consistent with the 2–3% inflation target since the September quarter…
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Posted: 8:00 am on 18th April 2012
Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk, with Satyajit Das at a special CIS event investigating the causes of the global financial crisis. At 6pm on 15 May at the Macquarie Bank Auditorium. Book here
