Should the new YA ‘independence’ test be delayed?
It’s not often that a classical liberal unites with a Labor government in support of a more egalitarian income distribution. But that is what I am doing in the current controversy over changes to the...
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Corporate welfare on the rise
As the Productivity Commission’s annual Trade and Assistance review revealed yesterday, corporate welfare is on the increase. After increasing at an annual rate of around 6% until mid-decade, it...
View ArticleShould students be able to claim YA eligibility expenses?
As reported this morning, the full court of the Federal Court has rejected the ATO’s appeal against the decision we discussed in April to allow as tax deductions expenses that help make students...
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Does full-fare public transport deter international students?
International students have long campaigned for public transport fare concessions. I have argued before that this is based on a mistaken understanding of why Australian students receive cheaper fares,...
View ArticleSome implications of a large temporary population
Because the number of people with Australian residence rights crept up with little public awareness or debate, our thinking about what this means for them and for the permanent population is not well...
View ArticleCheesed off working families
Yet more handouts to families, this time to fund school uniforms, are another sure sign that an election is about to be called. But as we have seen before, such is the sense of entitlement built up by...
View ArticleWelfare quarantining for the middle class
The Education Tax Rebate – whether Labor’s version or the more expensive Coalition version announced today – is the march of welfare quarantining beyond the income-support reliant lower classes into...
View ArticleShould welfare recipients get tax deductions for making themselves eligible...
As the media is reporting, the High Court has today ruled in favour of Symone Anstis in her claim to deduct from her taxable income expenses incurred in maintaining eligibility for Youth Allowance. We...
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Crowding out and in
In the 1990s I was interested in the social capital literature, as a way of empirically addressing some of the ‘communitarian’ criticisms of liberalism that I was writing about in my eventually...
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Where family payments aren’t welfare
John Howard disliked the idea that family payments were ‘welfare’. That’s why they were called ‘family tax benefits’, to emphasise that FTB was giving families back their earned money, rather than...
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