Its time the Liberal Party learnt the lessons of the Victorian state election and other recent federal byelection results and dropped the politics of fear, lies and those tired old scare campaigns like the one on Labors reforms to refundable franking credits.
Politics is about choices. Australians dont want the best tax loopholes in the world they want the best schools and hospitals in the world.
The facts on Labors responsible changes to dividend imputation once again show the Liberals are out of touch and can only rely on a desperate and misleading scare campaign.
Analysis released by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office this last week shows that:
92 per cent of taxpayers did not claim excess franking credits through their personal income tax return (2014-15 ATO Tax data);
more than 80 per cent of excess franking credits claimed by self-managed super funds went to those with balances above $1 million and more than half by funds with balances above $2.44 million.
over 71 per cent of all shares are owned by households with net wealth of over $1.97 million.
Making Labors reforms even more progressive is the Pensioner Guarantee which ensures that none of Australia's 2.5 million pensioners are worse off.
We know the Liberal Party is addicted to using taxable income data a stunt criticised by many reputable economists as that fails to account for assets or income streams that are tax free (like from superannuation)
Taxable income is what youre left after applying negative gearing and net rental deductions so this data leaves an extremely misleading sense of what these households and income groups are actually earning.
Australia is the only OECD country with a fully refundable dividend imputation credit system a concession which has grown at a rapid rate and now costs the budget more than $5 billion dollars a year.
Labors tough budget decisions include making multinationals pay their fair share, reforming negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount, the tax treatment of trusts, managing tax affairs and dividend imputation.
Its telling that Josh Frydenberg is so keen to spend so much time talking about Labors policies despite being a senior member of a five-year-old Liberal Government with no energy policy and no plans for wages growth except cutting penalty rates.
Federal Labor is the only major party with plan to reform the tax system and concessions, make them fairer, provide structural repair to the Budget, and to demonstrate how we will pay for better schools and hospitals as well as pay down debt.
Every time Josh Frydenberg and the Liberal Party attacks Labors reforms to trusts, negative gearing and refundable franking credits that is them choosing to maintain tax concessions that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy over funding for better schools and hospitals.
