7 news tonight had Bellbird taking up about 5000 elective surgeries a year, the Frankston private must be pushing out some numbers if they're capable of taking up the other 35,000 increase.
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Talking Politics
- Thread starter Legends of 2017
- Start date
Ten ways the government can make a bit of extra cash on the side, if it really wants to - The Shot
Here are some ideas that could actually save or make money that don’t involve making poor people even poorer
theshot.net.au
Ten ways the government can make a bit of extra cash on the side, if it really wants to - The Shot
Here are some ideas that could actually save or make money that don’t involve making poor people even poorer
Some of those suggestions are horrible and will have massive opposite effects that aren’t even mentioned.
Stopping funding private schools sounds a simple throwaway line. So private school fees go from 20 or 30 k a year to 30 or 40. Suddenly demand for public schooling goes up which is already struggling for teachers. Now public needs to go and buy more schools and pay more teachers.
Similar effects to abolishing negative gearing (rapidly). You will just see rents go up squeezing those worse off and increasing demand for public housing and other types of welfare. This thing needs to be done on new investments and eased on those who already have them. Not an immediate budget sugar hit.
With that said if these things are done over time and gradually then you can manage it and serve the right outcome.
Companies that are profitable and don’t pay tax is typically a massively uneducated comment. If a company invests 100 million of capital ten they can legally deduct for example 5m a year for depreciation until that capital is written off. If their profit is less than 5m (excluding depreciation) then of course they pay no tax. This is typically a headline grabbing point made by someone without a basic grasp of accounting.
Some merit on windfall taxes on utility/energy type companies that are pulling resources out of the ground, sea, sun or air. To be fair to business you want to signal rules like this before they invest. You will spook investment if you start just taking money off companies. The black swan upside is as much a carrot for capital as the downside risk that can exist as well.
Ten ways the government can make a bit of extra cash on the side, if it really wants to - The Shot
Here are some ideas that could actually save or make money that don’t involve making poor people even poorer
Looks good to me.
DS
i reckon some dont pay tax because they are based in Kiribati, or somewhere similar.
Inhabitants of the tiny Pacific nation of Kiribati hold $682m in Australian banks. So what's going on?
Fewer than 120,000 people inhabit Kiribati and the median household income is about $12,000. Yet data released by the Australian Taxation Office reveals $682 million in Australian bank accounts belong to foreign tax residents from the tiny Pacific nation.
www.abc.net.au
Private schools get more taxpayer dollars per student than state schools. Take the money from the private schools, give it to state schools. Simple.
Who said anything "rapidly"? But changes need to be made. Negative gearing is a rort. You won't "just" see rents go up, you will see people sell houses instead of stockpiling them, making them more available and therefore cheaper (which is a good thing, by the way. Australia's housing market is absurdly overpriced).
"If their profit is less than 5m (excluding depreciation) then of course they pay no tax"?? So I just have to set myself up as a company, make less than $5m and I won't have to pay tax?
There is no downside to windfall taxes on utility/energy companies, except for shareholders, who are profiting from exploitation of a war at the expense of others' hardship, so *smile* them. Fossil fuel companies are on the way out. The government should extract as much money from them as it possibly can.
By saying it will fix the budget it means rapidly. Otherwise it doesn’t fix it.
If you take money from private schools and just give it to public schools you will then need to come up with extra budget as demand for private schools will drop and increase for public schools. I’m all for making private schools fully privae (ie no taxpayer money) and have almost a fully public system that this would drive towards. But you need to move this way gradually or the system (much like the hospital system in Covid) won’t cope. I think any savings here will be minimal though as you basically replace one system with another.
Do you have something against depreciation or don’t understand it? It actually works for the government as it spreads the expense over a longer period of time vs an immediate write off that all companies want. This brings tax revenue forwards. Otherwise any growing companies would have an immediate massive loss and not pay tax until profits catch up to those losses. Maybe we are talking past each other but there is no logic in these comments to me. Companies that come up with *smile* deductions or shift profit to low tax locations etc are a different thintg altogether imo.
Ie A company that invest 3 billion dollars in something can rightfully offset some of that cost against earnings every year in accordance with ATO guidelines. If that amount plus other expenses are greater than earnings then there is no profit and no tax. If it’s less then there will be profit and tax.
Where negative gearing is a rort is because
Capital gains over a year has a 50% deduction that is only realised when and if the property is sold whereas the negative gearing can be used immediately against your current income tax. Let’s you play all sorts of games to time when you sell and pay half your marginal tax rate at that time. Don’t disagree that this should be PHASED out.
The massive stamp duties on buying property is to me the main issue that makes the market so poor. That downsizing to fit your lifestyle could trigger 50-100k one off tax is outrageous and massively destroys the liquidity of the property market. A land tax would be much fairer and naturally drive the asset to a good use. Again need to come up with ways to phase this in and give credit for stamp duty already paid.
The (albeit) small downside to windfall profits taxation is potentially capital goes elsewhere to invest that has more favourable rules and the resource isn’t developed or developed as much and there is no tax at all. Have a look at Venezuela to see what nationalising assets does. Presenting things as having no downside shows a lack of critical thinking and basically a political agenda to me. As I said I agree with the windfall profits concept.
Hmm, so taking the money off private schools won't give us enough money to properly fund an excellent public system (like Finland has and they, not coincidently, have the best performing schools in the world). Ok, fine, I have a solution. Not only are private schools subsidised for no good reason, they also get their curriculum for free, charge them for it.
Now, I may be wrong about this, but, when a company buys a piece of machinery I would assume that cost of the machine, when purchased, comes off their bottom line. So, for example, if BHP buys a truck for $100,000, that $100,000 is an expense which reduces their profit and therefore their taxable income for the year they spent the money. Is that the case or do they not get to include capital expenditure in their reporting of profit/loss for a year?
The one thing the government should do is to get rid of the tax cuts which the LNP passed and the ALP waved through. Those tax cuts massively benefit the very well off and the rest of us get little benefit. If I was them I would have already done this, ridiculous tax cut.
I would think Venezuela is hardly a comparable country to Australia. In any case, if you reckon nationalising is bad, how about privatisation? It has been a complete clusterfuck, how are your power bills going now with the inherently efficient and just stupendously wonderful privatised utilities? Yeah, great move that.
DS
Now, I may be wrong about this, but, when a company buys a piece of machinery I would assume that cost of the machine, when purchased, comes off their bottom line. So, for example, if BHP buys a truck for $100,000, that $100,000 is an expense which reduces their profit and therefore their taxable income for the year they spent the money. Is that the case or do they not get to include capital expenditure in their reporting of profit/loss for a year?
The one thing the government should do is to get rid of the tax cuts which the LNP passed and the ALP waved through. Those tax cuts massively benefit the very well off and the rest of us get little benefit. If I was them I would have already done this, ridiculous tax cut.
I would think Venezuela is hardly a comparable country to Australia. In any case, if you reckon nationalising is bad, how about privatisation? It has been a complete clusterfuck, how are your power bills going now with the inherently efficient and just stupendously wonderful privatised utilities? Yeah, great move that.
DS
I had a look on twitch today and was surprised to see the anti-vaxxers still protesting this time outside the Royal Children's hospital. The police are still present so the morons don't get hit by cars etc. How much is this costing the Vic taxpayer?
David appreciate your comments. Added some numbers.
1) I’m all for strengthening the public education system and reducing funding to private. I just don’t think you do it with a massive shock to the system. My mother was a public school teacher and didn’t want me to go to the school she taught at - definitely some issues with the quality of our public education
2) I’m not an accountant. Looks like somewhere between 7 and 12 years to expense it off. No way it could be written off in 1 year unless it was a write off for some reason. And I imagine a BHP truck costs millions. https://www.depreciationrates.net.au/truck
This is one of the things that does my head in when organisations run with these headlines. It’s as bad as invermectin pushing using a partially true headline to infer something that isn’t true. Capital expenditure by its very definition gets amortised (expensed) over multiple years.
3) yep income inequality a big driver of much harm. Anything that exacerbates this seems an easy one.
4) Venezuela is definitely an extreme example. Nationalising something you don’t have local expertise in is a bad move - and if your politicians are completely corrupt it will be even worse. In terms of energy prices what is happening in Australia is reflective of what is happening globally - what is your logic of connecting that to privatised utilities? Our prices are pretty much in line with global averages. Bloated inefficient organisations are usually ones that are monopolies (Telstra after that got privatised) or have low accountability and very few individuals get let go for poor performance (afl, many parts of government). My view is government needs to provide a good set of rules for industry to stop it exploiting everything and it will generally do a better job - where this breaks down is on things we consider essential (education /healthcare in Australia) as if you bring a profit motive into that you will undermine the service you want to provide. Can have plenty of debates over what should and shouldn’t be essential.
I'm not sure how long it would take to defund private schools, but it needs to happen. Won't though. But I have a bit of a solution to this - if you are a member of parliament, a public service bureaucrat (especially in the Education Dept) then you should be banned from sending your kids anywhere but the local state school. Watch the state schools improve when that happens!
No idea about how capital expenditure in a company gets accounted for, but surely if $100,000 goes out the door to buy something then that must be $100,000 of expenses.
Nationalising is not always good, but then again, like anything else it depends why and how you do it. The private sector is not by default more efficient, again it depends on the implementation. Privatising energy is part of the reason we are in the current mess. Power companies bought and sold often so they don't care about the long term just the current profits. Wailing about things like Hazelwood closing even though it closed about 10 years after it was predicted to close when it was built. Lots of mess with privatisation. Despite this, and despite privatisation being a complete clusterfuck, it has actually been a roaring success. How so? You have to ask yourself, why did they privatise things like power companies? Simple, so when there is a problem, it is no longer the government's fault. Part of the motivation was just ideology and lining the pockets of big business, but there was also the factor that when things go wrong you can't blame the government of the day for the mess. Oh, and the pockets of the big end of town have been nicely lined too.
DS
No idea about how capital expenditure in a company gets accounted for, but surely if $100,000 goes out the door to buy something then that must be $100,000 of expenses.
Nationalising is not always good, but then again, like anything else it depends why and how you do it. The private sector is not by default more efficient, again it depends on the implementation. Privatising energy is part of the reason we are in the current mess. Power companies bought and sold often so they don't care about the long term just the current profits. Wailing about things like Hazelwood closing even though it closed about 10 years after it was predicted to close when it was built. Lots of mess with privatisation. Despite this, and despite privatisation being a complete clusterfuck, it has actually been a roaring success. How so? You have to ask yourself, why did they privatise things like power companies? Simple, so when there is a problem, it is no longer the government's fault. Part of the motivation was just ideology and lining the pockets of big business, but there was also the factor that when things go wrong you can't blame the government of the day for the mess. Oh, and the pockets of the big end of town have been nicely lined too.
DS
Yes. You just have to spread it over many many years that depends on the tax code. A solid utility project may make 10% return. If you depreciate things over 8 years (12.5% per year) then you ‘make a profit’ EBITDA (earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation) for 8 years but don’t pay tax because the depreciation is greater than the profit for that year. This then leads to the stupid headlines we see. It’s this misunderstanding that leads to the ato crackdowns on rental properties. People renovate a room and expect to be able to write it off in one year whereas they have to spread it over many many years (and basically over claim on their tax return).
I really like your suggestion at first thought of politicians only being able to use public service goods. We would see pork barrelling of course but would definitely divert funds to public services.
When there is real competition and everyone has to play by the same rules I think you’d struggle to see any public enterprise be more efficient than a private one. I’d imagine some collective ownership ones could do much better though - where everyone wins if everyone wins.
At its heart a private enterprise will need to do more with less or lose to competition that does manage this. This behaviour can lead to both positive (real efficiency) and negative (exploitation and rule breaking / service reduction) consequences. A public enterprise will by default ask for more budget and be way less likely to innovate as quickly.
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The great socialist Premier of the great state of Victoria sends his kids to private schools.........................
Capex is a deduction but as Roar Emotion has said this gets spread over a number of years, which as he mentions, is actually an acceleration rather than deferral of profit and therefore any taxation debt.
Nationalisation is rarely good, for many reasons, the vast majority being that it creates a massive increase in management levels as profit is rarely considered. This doesn't lead to the expected improvements in customer service as again those things that drive private organisations (namely market dynamics and competition) generally don't exist for nationalised industries so therefore with no threat of competition, customer service falls through the floor as does efficiency. The taxpayer ends up paying regardless.
The problems that privatization has, is as you say, the goals of private organisations may end up being different to the best interests of the country, therefore IMO privatisaton is good but is largely executed in a poor way by the governments that go through with it. The energy industry in Australia is a good example. The drive towards gas (which should be a transitional fuel towards a green economy) is a great gain for the Australian economy. It has driven export revenues which is great HOWEVER, exports are in the best interests of the private organisations and not for the domestic market. It seems ridiculous that we are exporting gas into Asia, and then buying it back as we don't have enough to sustain our domestic supply. This is where the issue of poor execution exists. Those development contracts should have been agreed wit the gas companies, whereby a greater supply of gas production is retained within Australia for domestic supply and building up a National reserve. That was poor policy and both the ALP and the Libs need to take responsibility as both have signed development contracts over our gas resources. Whats more, there is NO federal policy on this, its left to the states, which IMO is a massive copout and again both parties need to take responsibility for that.
On windfall taxes, I'm not big on them, I prefer using increases to royalties (its similar but funding goes more into the local economies), but more over, we should be using these windfall profits to push companies into driving the capex into green energies. Bring in higher royalties / windfall taxes, but offer a tax offset / subsidy whatever you want to call it (via a decrease in the local royalty / windfall tax) in exchange for investing that capital into green energies within Australia rather than just paying it all out to shareholders as many of them are doing in high scale dividends.
The biggest issue is getting surgeons for those additional surgeries and it is an issue already in the catch up.
Surgeons earn more working for the private system where they earn gap fees. Paying them competitively in the public system is difficult.
Physical capacity is important, staffing remains a massive problem.
Happiest people in Melbourne this weekend would be the owners of Bellbird. stitched up the L plate health minister has paid per operating theatre $35 million to acquire. Did the deal include staff?
Return to government monopolies like Telecom? And the left criticse the Liberals for wanting to live in the 50s.
If Keating thought privatisation was the way forward that's good enough for me.
And Aust Post is still govt run .... one week to deliver a letter from Melb to Syd.
Scores of govt schools are as good as private schools Hopefully you include the Catholic schools as private. Many of them are *smile*. But can still produce the occasional PM.
So how come these state schools produce the goods on the same budget that others don't. That's the question the massive education bureaucracy needs to tackle.
Back in the day the govt schools were called State schools. The others were Public schools...ie not run by the State. So parents had a choice.... an education aligned to their values or one dictated by politicians of the day and bureaucrats.
Governments were slow to the education game especially post primary. Churches and other groups filled the gap. A century and a half of history and culture to overcome.
I didn't pay much attention but did Albanese take a de funding policy to the election?
The teals wouldn't know that there are govt schools at all.
