The Albanese authorities is being urged to scrap the upcoming Stage 3 tax cuts in favour of lifting the JobSeeker price to push extra Australians out of poverty.
A pre-budget submission by Anglicare Australia argues the upcoming cuts, scheduled to kick in subsequent 12 months, would “erode much of Australia’s progressive taxation system”.
“The parliament’s own figures shows that 78 per cent of the benefits from those tax cuts will go to the richest 20 per cent,” Anglicare Australia chief govt Kasy Chambers stated.
Ms Chambers stated the federal government ought to as an alternative improve the speed of JobSeeker and different Centrelink funds.
“Raising the rate of these payments would ease that struggle and lift millions of people out of poverty, including hundreds of thousands of children,” she stated.
“All of this can be done for well under the cost of the Stage 3 tax cuts.”
The tax cuts, because of come into impact in July 2024, are a part of modifications to the tax regime applied by the Morrison authorities and largely have an effect on medium to high-income earners.
Stage three includes abolishing the 37 per cent marginal tax bracket for these incomes $120,000 to $180,000 and making a flat price of 30 per cent for these incomes between $45,001 and $200,000.
The Stage 3 tax cuts are set to price $254 billion over ten years.
“Over three million Australians live in poverty and wealth inequality is now the worst it has been in 75 years,” the Anglicare submission says.
“Forthcoming tax cuts for high-income earners will worsen that inequality, making our tax system less progressive and more unfair.”
While arguing that the tax concessions for top earnings earners ought to be scrapped, Anglicare’s submission argued that social safety funds like JobSeeker, parenting funds and carer funds ought to be lifted to the extent they have been throughout the pandemic.
The report discovered that 1.44 million Australian adults and 840,000 kids would profit.
“These changes would cost $198 billion over ten years, considerably less than the cost of the proposed Stage 3 Tax Cuts,” the report stated.
Ms Chambers additionally argued the cash misplaced to the upcoming tax cuts would depart the federal authorities with much less cash to make use of towards getting folks out of poverty.
“Now, we’re not going to have a budget that can look after people’s general wellbeing if we put these tax cuts into place because there’s a $254 billion hole in future budgets,” she stated.
The report additionally discovered that the misplaced income from tax concessions to the richest 20 per cent of Australians outreaches the price of funding unemployment advantages.
The foregone tax income from concessions equivalent to unfavourable gearing is over $68 billion per 12 months or round $37 per week from each working particular person in Australia.
Meanwhile, the price of unemployment advantages in 2016-17 was $10.99 billion or round $6 per week per employee.
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
