this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
17 points (100.0% liked)

Australia

4412 readers
222 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
lodion@aussie.zone
Fluid@aussie.zone
bestusername@aussie.zone
eatham@aussie.zone
Nath@aussie.zone
17
If the economics of broadening or lifting Australia’s GST are challenging, the politics are horrendous (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 6 days ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to c/australia@aussie.zone
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

More GST revenue can pay for cuts to income and company tax rates, for example. This shift provides a structurally more stable tax revenue base, and sharpens incentives to work and invest.

Go to fluffing hell.

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 1 points 6 days ago

I unfortunately can't find the article that discussed the idea, but someone (an economist? a think tank?) brought up the idea of raising/broadening GST, but then then just giving everyone a flat amount back. In their modeling it halved the net revenue from the GST change (though it was still a good chunk of money), but made it financially neutral for people at lower incomes.

Edit: Again drawing from uni-assignment-land, I really like the PBO's discussion of Australia's tax mix: https://www.pbo.gov.au/about-budgets/budget-insights/budget-explainers/tax-mix/characteristics-different-taxes

Chapter 3 in the PDF has a great discussion about tradeoffs of different taxes, with both Figure 3-1 (near the start) and Table 3-1 (at the end) having some great insights if you're not well-versed in those design tradeoffs (i.e., almost everyone). Here's a copy of that first chart for easier reference: https://fedia.io/media/a9/3c/a93ca8c1bc7fea26f47b9063d55a175d04c0a846d69a4a66d240808675841e34.webp

Of course efficiency (which this figure shows) doesn't mean equity (which the chapter also discusses), hence ideas like the flat offset to balance it out.

load more comments (2 replies)