deepthought wrote on Mar 27
th, 2008 at 7:10pm:
Dooley wrote on Mar 27
th, 2008 at 4:43pm:
well then enlighten me, show what info your using to substantiate your insight. prove to me what you seemingly profess you know. how hard could it be?
It's not hard at all, I'm just surprised you are asking.
Quote:The revenue lobby in Australia have succeeded in maintaining a barrage of arguments in favour of progressive income tax. The facts, many of them set out here and in other CIS publications, do not sustain those arguments. The top 25 percent of income earners pay 64 percent of the personal income tax. This result, based on ATO data, stands up to criticism. The argument that low and middle-income earners pay more of their income in taxation than high-income earners is simply false. It is not even ‘roughly proportional’. Arguments about tax evasion and avoidance are red herrings. Even if evasion and avoidance were serious problems the top 25 percent of income earners still pay 64 percent of personal income tax and 40 percent of households still pay all tax net of welfare. Nobody should be surprised that high-income earners pay more in tax than low-income earners. That is how a progressive tax system is meant to operate. The revenue lobby’s arguments do not stand up to scrutiny. Through their campaign of confusion and obfuscation, however, they are able to sustain a policy of taxation with misrepresentation.
Caution - pdf file Got that Dooley? It's been crystal clear to the rest of us all along and now you have someone other than me telling you the bleeding obvious.
"The top 25 percent of income earners pay 64 percent of the personal income tax.""40 percent of households still pay all tax net of welfare"So the top 25% of income earners (the wealthy or high income earners) pay 64% of all income tax. And all gross income tax collected is paid for by only 40% of all households.
It is as I said that many low income earners pay no tax at all and the health care they expect for free is paid for by the wealthy. Far from leeching the wealthy pay for
all public health and often also have private health cover too.
Your apology if you would be so kind old boy.
here's something else to consider.
One of the most striking features of the tax system is its extraordinary
stability over most of the life cycle. Income tax hovers at about half of
total taxes for much of the life cycle, before plummeting dramatically
once retirement nears and after children have left home. Similarly, the
total tax burden as a percentage of gross income is relatively stable, at about 47 per cent of gross income, for most of the life cycle. It is less than 40 per cent for only single persons aged 65 years or more.
If the tax burden is measured as a percentage of gross income, then
above-average burdens are borne by the most affluent 20 per cent of
households, single persons living by themselves and aged less than 65
years, couples with no children and with one or no earners, households
whose primary income source is private (not wage and salary) income,
single income couples with dependent children and smoking
households. Households with below-average tax burdens are the least
affluent 40 per cent of households, single aged, sole parents and
households whose principal income source is government cash benefits.
http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/pubs/dps/dp39/dp39.pdf
this study of course doesn't take into account what most average to high paid workers these days in both the private and public sector have available to them: salary packaging. salary packaging of housing, cars, laptop computers, food and other items deemed acceptable by the ATO, such as superannuation.
Nor does take into account things like salary/wage minimisation schemes like trust fund arrangements.
you'd be lucky to get an apology from me on this one.
sorry about the stuff up with the cutnpaste of the article