Federal Election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull
rules out GST change for at least three years
May 1 2016 - 9:31PM - James Massola
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
has put any changes to the GST on the political back burner, ruling out changes
to the consumption tax for at least three years if his government is
re-elected.
Turnbull confirms he wants July
2nd poll
There will be a double-dissolution
election, says Malcolm Turnbull, and he intends holding it on July 2nd.
Courtesy ABC News 24.
Ahead of Tuesday's federal
budget - and an expected visit to Government House by the end of the week to
ask the Governor-General to call an election for July 2 - Mr Turnbull also
foreshadowed "substantial" tax changes.
And the Prime Minister has
declared his government will be judged by voters on its "new agenda"
at the election - rather than being bound to all of the promises made by former
Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
"There will be no change to the
GST in the next parliament": Malcolm Turnbull.
"We are not fiddling, this
is going to be a critically important document... all of the other measures
that we have proposed are vitally important, but obviously the tax changes had
to await the budget.
"There is substantial tax
reform, tax changes in the budget. Yes, we will be going to an election on July
2 and that will go to an election, unless the measures are passed before the
Houses are dissolved."
The Coalition is expected to
hike tobacco taxes and to reduce superannuation tax concessions for the
well-off in Tuesday's budget, while a cut to company taxes is also in prospect.
Other measures expected in the
budget include a $5 billion dental plan, additional funding for corporate
regulator ASIC and end to the temporary budget repair levy for people earning
more than $180,000 will all be confirmed.
There will also be an
additional $1.2 billion for school funding, students face the prospect of
paying more for their university degrees – and having to pay back their debt
sooner while an extension of the $20,000 instant asset write-off for small
business is in prospect.
Reflecting on the decision to
abandon a possible rise in the GST to 15 per cent, Mr Turnbull dismissed
suggestions the federal government had "given up" on tax reform after
looking "very carefully" at the GST.
"If you were to increase
the GST by 50 per cent, to 15 per cent for example, you would raise about an
additional $30 billion a year. About $6 billion of that would go in automatic
indexation of pensions and benefits, so you'd have $24 billion left," he
said.
"But here's the catch, at
that point 91 per cent of people in the bottom 20 per cent of incomes, and
about 74 per cent of people in the second bottom quintile would be worse off.
"So we looked at the
distributional analysis, we saw that by the time you had compensated people in
the two bottom quintiles, the bottom 40 per cent of incomes, what you had left
over to go for personal income tax cuts or company tax cuts was a relatively
modest amount given the scale of the change proposed."
The federal budget would focus
on supporting jobs and growth - a familiar refrain from the prime minister and
his front bench - while setting up the tax system to be "sustainable"
and "fit for purpose in 2016 and the years ahead".
Pressed on whether he was bound
by all of the promises made by Mr Abbott - such as not changing the tax
arrangements for Australia's super system - Mr Turnbull said that on the eve of
an election "what we are setting out is an economic plan for voters to
approve or not at the 2016 election".
"This is submitting a new
agenda, this is not Tony Abbott's plan, it's the plan of the Turnbull
government."
Labor has already promised to
make changes to both tobacco taxes and superannuation and Mr Abbott has
criticised these changes in that context, while also arguing that the Turnbull
government's agenda is essentially the same as his own.
This story has been brought to you by the Emerald Chamber of Commerce Inc.
(Ph: 07 4982 3444)
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