Half the Australian businesses that got a tax cut have banked the cash Half the Australian businesse, page-12

Here we go again cherry picking the facts.
How convenient that you are not disclosing the benefits but choose to zero in on the 50% cashing in the money.
Show us another policy which will result in half of businesses increasing investment or boosting hiring.
The numbers are also skewed by the fact that 34% of small businesses didn’t even know they got a tax cut.
But hey, let’s tax everyone more instead because that will definitely incentivize people to work more and hire people....after all we have to pay for that increase in education spending which has delivered nothing but shockingly bad results since 2007, but it’s ok let’s bash business it’s not like they employ and pay most of us...

“Close to half the Australian businesses that received a company tax cut in 2015 either boosted investment spending or hiring, according to a study that challenges claims there is no evidence the Coalition's planned reductions would benefit the economy.

A study by AlphaBeta, founded by former advisor to prime minister Kevin Rudd, using data from cloud accounting firm Xero, for the first time shows a meaningful link between tax cuts and better economic outcomes.

The findings provide a near-real time laboratory experiment of the impact of the Coalition's decision to cut taxes in 2015 to 28.5 per cent from 30 per cent for companies with less than $2 million of turnover. Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the cut in the 2015 budget.

Trawling de-identified accounting data from nearly half a million businesses, AlphaBeta's team says it was able to identify meaningful differences in decisions taken by firms just below and above that $2 million threshold.

Some 51 per cent was used to increase the business' cash holdings, some of which may have been used to offset interest payments.

Another 27 per cent was used to lift investment, while 19 per cent of firms decided to hire more workers.

Only 3 per cent raised wages in the first instance.

The value of the tax cut for businesses below the $2 million turnover threshold averaged $2900, the study found.

In dollar terms, compared to companies just above threshold, firms below that hired in 2016 more people equivalent to $560 in extra wages; and reported $800 in extra investment.

Wages per worker rose $75 while the remainder, some $1500, went into other things including a higher post-tax profit.

AlphaBeta's Andrew Charlton described the research – which was reviewed by economists Jim Minifie, Henry Ergas and Richard Holden – as the first "bit of real evidence" about how company tax cuts work.

He said this was driven by the confluence of two things – the natural experiment caused by the decision to grant tax cuts only to small firms; as well as the emergence of cloud-based accounting which allows researchers to measure across hundreds of thousands of companies the impact of decision making on their books.

This includes real-time changes to the number of workers employed, cash on hand, total salaries, fixed-asset registers and dividends paid.

None of those things are as easily replicated from official tax office data.

Dr Charlton said while the findings aren't a "slam dunk either way" they don't suggest company tax cuts are futile.

"I don't think it's a terrible story. The tax cuts increase the marginal productivity of investment," he said. "Firms invest; when they invest labour productivity goes up; they invest in more workers, and as firms invest in more workers wages go up.

"There is not an immediate effect of firms receiving a tax cut and paying higher wages, but there is an effect of firms increasing workers and investment."

Dr Charlton said the impact on wages was "not that surprising".

"That it has a positive effect on employment is reasonably significant."

The 2015 tax cut predates the Coalition's more extensive 2016 budget plan to lower the corporate rate for all companies to 25 per cent over 10 years.

So far the cuts have only been legislated for firms with revenue of less than $50 million, with the government pushing the Senate crossbench to pass the reduction on to all firms.

Notably, Dr Charlton said the study of how firms responded to the 2015 tax cut included a survey of small businesses which revealed that 34 per cent weren't aware they've received a tax cut, likely reducing their impact on jobs, wages and investment.

"That's going to depress the impact," he said.

Dr Charlton said the Xero data accessed by AlphaBeta was fully anonymised and safeguarded.

The study shows that over the course of the year when the cuts were delivered, companies that were just below the $2 million threshold delivered a 2.6 per cent increase in employment, while those just above increased workers by 2.1 per cent.

The difference, of 0.5 percentage point, was "small but statistically significant," Dr Charlton said.

Similar differences were identified in the study for investment and cash-on-hand.

The report's authors warn that the study only looks at how the tax benefit is used in the first two years. "It is possible that many of the hypothesised effects of tax cuts, especially those that require market adjustments, may take time to develop."

The study also found that some companies may have sought to take advantage of the 2015 tax cut by ensuring their turnover was below the $2 million threshold

Dr Charlton expects the study will eventually be replicated to study how companies responded to subsequent reductions in the corporate tax rate for firms below $10 million.