En Passant

As the full implications of the Panama Papers are still being unravelled, John Passant analyses the IPA’s Mikayla Novak’s argument, which favours tax havens and maintaining privacy for investors. This is the link to my article called Australia as a tax haven in Independent Australia.

This is the link to my article in socialist magazine Solidarity on the Panama Papers.

If I were Bill Shorten I’d release my tax returns for the last few years and call on Turnbull to do the same.

We could tax the rich to fund better services. None of the parties of neoliberalism – the Liberals and Nationals and the Labor Party – are going to really do that. At best they will offer mickey mouse changes as part of a smokescreen to give the impression of doing something without actually doing anything major to upset the rich and powerful, the capitalists, whose system drives them to avoid tax and hide their affairs in secrecy jurisdictions.

Now I know none of this tax the rich stuff will in reality get on the agenda willingly of the Labor Party. The answer is that when the current or future governments attack funding for workers or the poor, attack public schools, public hospitals and public universities, the fightback against those attacks has the potential, among other potentialities, to challenge the ruling class and its systemic tax avoidance and secrecy. To tax the rich build the fight against austerity.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he’s keen on transparency but shields the rich from transparency on tax, shrouds our gulags in secrecy about atrocities in detention and tells us zip about his tax haven investments. Not good enough, says former Assistant Commissioner of Taxation John Passant in Independent Australia.

Me in Independent Australia on Turnbull, tax, and protecting the rich from transparency.

An annual net wealth tax on the top 10 percent of the wealth holders, abolition of the superannuation tax haven, removal of the capital gains tax concession, taxing trusts like companies, imposing a super profits tax on all industries (such as banks, not just mining companies,) making the current income tax system more progressive, with for example a 100% rate on all income greater than $250,000, are just a few suggestions that come to my mind. Of course, Labor as a party of neoliberalism won’t do anything radical. It will fiddle while the revenue Rome burns

No doubt all those companies in Vanuatu (especially those with some sort of Australian connection) which have benefited from not paying any income tax there and perhaps reducing their Australian and other country tax will be chipping in lots to help the country after the catastrophic Cyclone Pam destroyed a number of lives and livelihoods. Oh …

The one percent has captured not only Parliament and tax policy but tax administration now too. If that is true, the conclusion we might then reach is that the slaughter of Tax Office jobs currently under way is actually an attempt to administratively reduce taxes on capital by weakening the capacity of the ATO to tax the rich and powerful. Certainly that fits in neatly with the neoliberal cut taxes mantra of most politicians and the Treasury.

Over to you Commissioner of Taxation.

Company tax avoidance is not a failing of capitalism: it is its logical expression.
There are two ways to really tax the rich. The first is for workers to win bigger pay increases to stop the bosses getting their hands on more of our money before they can play funny buggers with it. The second is to overthrow the capitalist system which produces corporate tax avoidance.