There's just no way the Coalition would consider inheritance...

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    There's just no way the Coalition would consider inheritance tax-death duties. No matter how far to the Left they have lurched in recent weeks, they would never go quite that far.

    I don't think they can increase the GST nor broaden its base either. When they are begging Australians to help kickstart the economy by spending up, it would be idiotic to suddenly slap an extra 5-10% on the price of buying anything (or 15-20% for fresh food, education etc). Clawing our way out of a deep recession/depression is going to be hard enough without discouraging spending so heavily.

    Back in the day, the Abbott-Hockey partnership were happy to place a 2% levy on the $180k-plussers, and they were a mile to the Right of the Morrison-Frydenberg team even before the Corona package. My best guess is that they will place a 4% levy across the board, to balance the burden of the payback.

    No matter what they do they will a) still have an awful lot of unemployed people swelling welfare expenditure which had already been cut to the bone, and b) still have to present something that is even remotely politically palatable, given that due to the delay in budget release they are much closer to the next election cycle.

    A flat levy is the easiest one to argue, and they will show in the other column how they will spend every penny between payback and infrastructure to make it harder to attack or complain about. That's my best guess anyway, their options are pretty limited and they are still, after all, a political animal looking to get another term.
 
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