I took Howards GDP to Tax ratio of 23.5% from your opening post on this thread.
In my previous post i linked an article which i have linked here too which clearly states the Tax tp GDP level in 2021-2022 at 29.6% on the first page before the graph that follows and i posted. It says....
Key statistics
In the year 2021-22 across all levels of government, total taxation revenue was:$683.0 billion
$89.9 billion (15.2%) higher than 2020-21
29.6% as a percentage of GDP.Yes ok that was ScoMo but we all know government taxes have increased since then and like you say Jim and Albo have further increased the rate by getting more tax out of corporates and also the government revenues with all the inflation we have had to suffer and are still suffering with has increased rvenues further again, in a recent A FR article it says this.....
" Taxation revenue across all tiers of government amounted to a
near-record 30.3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2023, according to Financial Review analysis. Federal spending was 24.5 per cent of GDP while state government outlays were 5.8 per cent of economic activity."
https://www.copyright link/policy/economy/government-tax-take-and-spending-nears-record-high-20240307-p5fakiSo i have compared apples to apples and the chart shows a good visual of how much government revenues from taxes have increased over the last ten years and the AF R article shows further increases since then.
Now, i get Government needs revenues and to stop corporates avoiding tax fair enough but with all these larger than ever tax revenues how can the government be crying poor, they've never had such a large tax take and why on earth is our government still spending at levels like in Covid emergency when theres no more emergency, the country shouldn't need all this extra government spending as stimulus anymore and i would have thought would be cutting back the levels of government spending back to more normalised levels because all the extra emergency stimulus spending for covid shouldn't be required anymore should it?
Gov spending should now be more back in line with 2020 spending levels plus a bit extra each year for the cost of inflation i would have thought. In that same A FR article it shows current government spending to be....." Federal, state and local government spending levels amounted to a
near-record 27.2 per cent of GDP in 2023, according to analysis of Wednesday’s national accounts figures by The Australian Financial Review. T
he figure excludes spending on debt interest and cash welfare payments like JobSeeker, so the actual level of spending was even higher."So with no emergency like a GFC or a Pandemic and with huge inflation our Government has not cut back on spending at all, spending is 27.2% of GDP and thats not counting the interest on debt payments and Welfare and these things should be counted as it's all spending, it's all government stimulus, it all adds to demand in our economy and thus contributes to inflation and competitive demand for goods and services, Surely our government should be trimming it's spending back to more normal and historic levels and repaying the all the debt Morrison had to borrow for the covid stimulus, wouldn't that be more sensible than keeping on spending and stimulating the economy making the reserves banks job of tackling inflation easier, the country would also then be more fiscally prepared for any future events like GFC, Pandemic which would make us all safer?
Another thing that boggles my mind with Labor's tax policies is why with all this extra tax revenues from corporates and high IO, Coal and gas prices do they still have to put taxes up on Beer/alcohol and increase fuel excises, cigarettes and Passport fees and rego's etc that directly impact us all and add to the costs of living for Australians when we already suffering the extra cost all this inflation is bringing, none of these increases make the cost of living cheaper it makes it more expensive, yet Albo and Jim say they trying to reduce the cost of living and then turn around and increase it on peoples commonly purchased items!, why can't they reduce the taxes on Alcohol, Beer, petrol now they are getting more revenues from corporate and high commodity prices, just substitute those extra revenues into real world cost of living savings by reducing those taxes and/or alike taxes gov fee's etc or just reduce our income taxes by however much extra the gov is getting from high commodities and corporates, if they net an extra 100bn from business why can't they reduce the peoples taxes by that amount or maybe even better why can't they use all the extra revenues to repay our debt first?
30% of GDP is quite a large number especially when gov stimulates the economy with all of it, taxation levels and gov spending never use to be this high just a few years ago and no body knows if commodity prices or demand for our Australian commodities will keep going at these levels so why not pay the debt back while the money is in the till? Indo's Nickel mine and our companies writdedowns of nickel mine values along with all the historic boom and bust mining cycles show such large tax revenues are not certain to continue year after year, i even think theres a new IO mine coming online in Africa in the next year or so which maywell effect our gov IO revenues.
It's a good chance for Jim to pay down our debt and return Gov spending back to historical norms or ratio's imo, with all this inflation we've got he's got a good excuse to be fiscally sensible too imo don't you think? I don't think it's fiscally healthy for a country to always rely on Gov stimulus to stop us going into recession, we never use to need a government to spend so much to maintain a + GDP number and nothing wrong with a slowdown at the moment as it will make the reserve banks job a lot easier, they less demand in the system and want people to stop spending as much yet our government is still stimulating demand at record levels and i just don't get how that makes any sense at all in the current circumstances.
