Happy birthday GST, you haven't changed - 200 Proof Liberal

"The old rule of thumb I have is any tax reform at any moment is three banner headlines from defeat."

~Chris Richardson

Happy birthday GST, you haven't changed

Canberra Times by Colin Brinsden

Monday 29 June 2020

You can almost sense the collective eye-roll when prime ministers and treasurers talk about a new round of tax reform and the first question is: "Will you raise the GST?"

It's a valid question for a meaningful overhaul of our tax system, but it is one both sides of politics would rather ignore and leave in the too-hard basket.

That's despite a wealth of economists, tax experts and international institutions, like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, urging changes to the GST to be included in any tax reform.

Shakespeare on Tax Reform: 20 years of the GST

Grant Wardell-Johnson

Lead Tax Partner, KPMG Economics & Tax Centre

There has been some recent commentary noting that 1 July 2020 will be the 20^th anniversary of the introduction of the GST. It is also the 90^th anniversary of the introduction of the Wholesale Sales Tax which the GST relaced, the 45^th anniversary of the Asprey Review report which advocated a broad-based consumption tax, the 35^th anniversary of the Hawke Cabinet endorsing Keating’s Option C, with Keating famously rolled on the position in the following month, the 25^th anniversary of the then Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, promising that they would never introduce a GST. And whilst on anniversaries, there was a Fightback birthday cake that had an impact as well.

One of the curses of too much education is that you cannot just experience life as it is, but constantly see what is going on around you as concrete illustrations of abstract principles.

200 Proof Liberals — a new group political philosophy blog

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40 logicians from 8 countries took part in a 24-hour meeting earlier this month “to discuss ways we might make logic more inclusive and thereby take a small step in efforts to mitigate racism” — Teresa Kouri Kissel (ODU) reports on #ShutDownLogic

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Malala Yousafzai, the youngest recipient ever of a Nobel Peace Prize, has graduated from Oxford –the NYT couldn’t resist noting in the sub-headline that the philosophy, politics, and economics major is “currently unemployed”