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AUSTRALIA

Philanthropy should be a condition of tax relief

  • 11 February 2013

Prime Minister Julia Gillard ruled it out last week, but there's no denying that the Federal Government would like to reduce tax concessions for the wealthy when they access their superannuation. Last year the concessions cost $30 billion in forgone revenue, and Treasury estimates the figure will increase to $45 billion by 2015–16.

The concessions are designed to encourage more Australians to fund their own retirement, and not burden the public purse by taking the age pension. But in reality, it would be much more cost effective to remove the means test from the age pension and have the rich receive the same $712 per fortnight as the poor. 

Australia Institute research fellow David Richardson says that in his last six budgets, former treasurer Peter Costello took the cost of super tax concessions from 1.3 per cent of GDP to 3.3 per cent. Meanwhile, the cost of the age pension was at just over 2 per cent of GDP. In 2009, the Australia Institute produced a report titled The great superannuation tax concession rort, which showed how the concessions redistribute scarce resources away from low-income earners towards the secure and privileged well-off. 

The scarce resources are required to fund important but expensive projects such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which will improve the lives of countless needy Australians. By contrast, the concessions secure the sometimes obscene lifestyles of wealthy Australians, who believe they are entitled to tax relief.

Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd told a round table meeting last Thursday: 'Philosophically, I object to the term 'concessions' ... We go to work, we get paid. The money is ours.'

Shepherd speaks on behalf of a section of the population whose members have often worked hard to get where they are. They feel it is unfair that they are expected to share their reward with those who may not have worked as hard, or been as lucky in the lottery of life.

Such an attitude belongs more to the USA, the land of the self-made man, and not to the Commonwealth of Australia, where we have always been more mindful of the common good. 

But it has to be noted that respectable self-made men in the US give generously to their favourite charities and foundations. In Australia, respectable citizens pay their taxes, and welfare and other public needs tend to be government funded. Philanthropy has never taken root. This was confirmed in an Australian
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