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The Tax Issues That Will Not Go Away

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Neil Warren
Neil Warren*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, The University of New South Wales
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Abstract

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The last decade has seen major changes made to the taxation system in Australia. However, these changes have been primarily concerned with income tax reform. Three areas of the tax reform remain outstanding - wealth taxation, State tax reform and commodity tax reform. Wealth taxation has proven a politically sensitive issue subject to little public discussion, a situation not helped by a lack of data on wealth distribution in Australia. State taxation has been the focus of more public debate through a number of Government funded reviews but despite this, few of these report’s recommendations have been implemented. Although the issue of commodity tax reform has been the subject of considerable public debate, it too has resuted in no substantive reforms. This paper argues that until the political dimension of tax reform is taken more fully into account when designing tax reform proposals, the debate on these three tax issues will not move from words to legislation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , June 1995 , pp. 17 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1995

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