Article from the Australian excerpt…“Earlier this year Mr Shorten unveiled his franking credits policy to claw back nearly $60bn over 10 years by abolishing cash refunds for excess dividend imputation credits.
“Modelling from the listed investment companies sent to the ALP this week argues it would increase the tax burden on individuals with low marginal tax rates and those who do not access a government pension. Depending on an individual’s income level and mix, the policy may reduce a low-income earner’s after-tax income by up to 30 per cent.
“Its analysis claims taxpayers earning less than $65,000 who are likely to be financially worse off include 18-65-year-olds running their own business, single parents, non-working spouses and self-funded retirees.” (emphasis added)
So, they’re at it again!
Labor seem to want to take money from people who have gone to enormous lengths to reduce their taxable income to a point where they’re classified as our low income earners.
How terrible!
I mean, surely someone who’s only earning a taxable income of $19,000 a year should be entitled to franking credits from the million dollars worth of shares they own. And non-working spouses, who somehow – in spite of their workless state – have managed to accumulate a large share portfolio from which they receive a refund from the government for the tax that the company paid on their behalf. They shouldn’t be taxed on this income twice… Or given that the tax already paid is being returned, it seems that they shouldn’t be taxed once, because, after all, they’re not working, and unlike the unemployed, they’re not lazy because they have share portfolio…
This is the negative gearing argument all over again. As Scott Morrison pointed out, some of those who were negative gearing weren’t high income earners. In fact, some of the people with 49 negatively geared properties were only earning a pitiful income. Although when $40 a day is enough to live on, their pitiful income was relative, but it was the sort of pitiful income that a teacher or a nurse would earn, and therefore we should be outraged that Labor would seek to take away the very means that allows them to reduce their taxable income from the gross of a million or so, down to the seventy or eighty thousand that makes us all pity them…
Unless we’re on $40 a day, in which case we can be dismissed as try to start class warfare or politics of envy or something like that.
Whatever…
I sometimes find the arguments a bit hard to follow.
Like when our PM went on “The Project” to tell us that the people smugglers had control of our borders when Labor was in power, which makes me wonder why we were bothering to pay people in the coast guard and customs areas.
The PM had a good result in Newspoll today. I know this because “The Australian” had a headline about Turnbull leaving Shorten for dead. My immediate thought was that this just proves the man lacks compassion and empathy if he’d just leave somebody like that. However, it was in relation to the poll where it showed that he was still preferred PM, even though Labor were still in front on a two party prefered. I mean, the two party prefered thing doesn’t count really, does it? As most sports people would say, I’d rather give up any of my premierships so long as I got the highest honour…
Ok, maybe sports people wouldn’t say that, but I’m sure that Malcolm would if he had the talent to succeed at anything apart from be obsequious to the conservatives in the Liberal Party.
And when it comes to that, he’s worth every penny of the income he doesn’t receive because it goes into a private charity. From there it goes to that place called None Of Business, It’s A Private Charity, but some went to hospital once…
Oh, and didn’t we all see the photo of Mr Turnbull putting a fiver into that homeless man’s cup? Probably what was left over from the fund after overheads. And slinging that guy was so much easier than actually doing something about homelessness, which would have resulted in lots of bureaucracy and red tape.
sigh<
