If you are wondering how so many concessions and a fundamental re-write of the super tax has still managed to secure almost the same revenue, read these two articles by Terry McCrann in The Australian and Geoffrey Lehmann in Australian Financial Review.
Both point to far deeper impacts of the original proposal than the Government was admitting.The new tax gets around half the revenue of the original according to Lehmann, who has a long history of pointing out Treasury's inability to get revenue projections right.
Now, the question is, what's in the detail and how will it impact on Australian miners rather than the global player with diversified projects and commodities? Swiss miner Xstrata might have won, but what about the wholly Australian owned juniors who often do the heavy lifting. After the debacle of Super Tax Mark1, how can we trust Treasury and the same players like Swan to get it right.Two weeks ago he was arguing the Mk1 tax was perfect, now he argues this one is better?
It is now clear that this is neither tax reform nor tax simplification.
Given the spin that suggest the headline rate is still 30% when most observers say the effective rate is 22.5%, and that the impact on mining is now likely to be a slow burn for future generations to deal with, the question remains, shouldn't this ad hoc, policy on the run tax be scrapped and the Government go back and start again? Or is this simply making sure there is a political fix in place for the next election?
Can we rely on the same team that gave us the insulation debacle, the BER waste, no action on climate change at all and now a pending third position on asylum seekers to actually get this intricate and complex tax on our biggest export earner right? What do you think?
Julia
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