The Big Monopolies pay bugger all

Vanguard June 2011 p. 9
David B.


Pouring over commentary on the Federal Government Budget, I came across a couple of facts that stood out in the midst of acres of unenlightening opinion and floss.

While the mining industry and parts of the monopoly media wail furiously about the cost of a mining super-profits tax, the current Federal Resources Rent Tax contributes just $2.1 billion or 0.06% to Federal Government revenue.

Given their tens of millions spent on advertising last year, they obviously think that’s a fair price to pay for access to the country’s oil and ore.

By contrast individual income tax plus the GST paid eventually by consumers amount to more than $200 billion, 57.5% of Federal Budget revenue. Add petrol, beer, tobacco and other excises of $40 billion paid almost exclusively by people across the country, and the combined total amounts to just on 80% of Federal Government revenues.

There may be some of that coming from the corporate sector, but the vast bulk ends up coming from the people. We pay the lion’s share. Big business pays peanuts.

However it’s the people that get the monkeys and business that gets looked after. Just have a look at who they government has been consulting about this mining super-profits tax. It has been a handful of the biggest foreign-owned mining companies in the country, including Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton. Its time we made the multinationals pay, starting with the mining multinationals.

Another hullabaloo, this time around the budget itself, was made about family payments being means-tested at a threshold family taxable income not indexed to inflation of $150,000 a year. The commentariat consists largely of people lining up to that threshold.

The starvation “Newstart” benefit amounts to a whopping $13,000 a year or just a bit less. Newstart is not even 10% of the controversial threshold. The mean wage is just over $50,000 a year, before tax. That’s one third of the threshold figure.

While the controversy has been frustrating to watch, all these amounts pale into insignificance next to the profit reports of the big banks. The big four reported billions and billions of profit in 6 months. Where is the threshold on their government support?