Family First's Steve Fielding has played populist politics with the luxury car tax. He said he was defending farmers' and tourist operators' "tools of trade".
The numbers tell a different story. The standard Toyota Landcruiser Cab-chassis starts at around $55,000 and a Troop Carrier for just over $60,000. The Hilux 4WD is around $40,000. The increase in luxury tax for a $65,000 vehicle would have been approximately $350 after business tax deductions. For a $60,000 vehicle it would have been round $120. At $57,180 it would be zero.
Farmers and tour operators who chose sensible options in hard times would not have been affected to any significant extent. But it sounds good. Families will pay the shortfall of $555 million in some way. Presumably through higher interest rates because of a reduced surplus.
According to the Australian Taxation Office website:
The term ‘car’ does not include:
* trucks and vans designed to carry a load of more than two tonnes
* vehicles, such as buses, designed to carry nine or more passengers
Farmers and tour operators who chose sensible options in hard times would not have been affected to any real extent.
But it sounds good. Families will pay for the taxation shortfall of $555 million in some way. Presumably through higher interest rates because of a reduced surplus. Fielding should answer to his constituency for that, rather than trying to pick up easy votes.
2 comments:
Good post, Kevin. And I would imagine the people Fielding claimed to be protecting should be able to reduce the costs even further through tax deductions for work vehicles.
Have a look at this link
http://perotcharts.com/category/taxation-charts/page/9/
It is statistics for the American economy and I am struggling to find the figures which show proportion of taxes paid by differing income groups in Australia. As you can see the top 10% of earners pay 70% of taxes in the US and I am sure the figures are similar in Australia.
Arguably the 'rich' who work hard to earn a nice sum of money have already done their part in filling the governments coffers with its huge surplus and should not be burdened with increased luxury car tax to maintain the governments surplus.
All whilst middle Australia continues unchecked contributing to inflation with its reckless credit based consumption, too high mortgages and leaving our labor run states to blast away huge sums of money through reckless spending, shortsighted policy.
Whilst I applaud Federal Labor for taking steps to address inflation and economic inequality I do believe that this is simply a populist piece of legislation designed to appease 'suffering' middle Australians who have caused their own financial misfortune.
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