Australia’s ruling conservative coalition yesterday delivered a risk-free Budget to try to steer the nation through “extraordinary times” as it sought to draw campaign battle lines ahead of looming elections. It aims to keep expenses down to balance the budget and pay down the debt.
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“Our new spending offsets have been more than offset by our spending restraint”, Mr Morrison says.
Green Party co-leader James Shaw called for the New Zealand government to follow Australia’s measures to clamp down on multinational tax rorts.
“This is not a time to be splashing money around or increasing the tax burden on hard working Australians”.
“Australians know that our future depends on how well we continue to grow and shape our economy as we transition from the unprecedented mining investment boom to a stronger, more diverse, new economy…” The initiative has been predicted to reduce tax bills for roughly 350,000 small Australian construction businesses.
The tax rate for small companies will fall to 27.5 percent on July 1. That is why last year, we announced a 1.5 percentage point reduction in the tax rate for small businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million per year.
To ensure the budget is on track for balance in 2020/21, tobacco taxes will be hiked by 12.5 per cent a year from September 1, 2017, to raise $4.7 billion over four years.
There will be a new diverted profits tax, strengthened protections for whistleblowers and increased penalties for multinationals that fail to meet their compliance and disclosure obligations.
The middle tax threshold will increase from $80,000 to $87,000, saving $6 a week for people earning $80,000 or over per year. That is higher than the standard rate of 30 percent.
“We would like to do more but this is what we can afford today”, Mr Morrison says.
“Superannuation changes should encourage low income earners to build a bigger nest egg while balancing higher income contributions in a responsible way”.
The government has put about half of the savings back into superannuation.
The subsidy, which will require parents to undertake at least eight hours of work a fortnight to qualify, was originally due to start on July 1, 2017.
Other spending measures outlined by Canberra included additional defence spending of Aus$29.9 billion over the next 10 years.
The government is banking on a 20-year defence industry plan, as well as $50 billion in infrastructure and $2 billion for new dams and pipelines to keep jobs flowing.
The job seekers will get $200 a fortnight while interns, on top of their ordinary income support.
Mr Morrison said he did not believe the changes were retrospective, saying the Federal Government was not asking people to remove lump-sum contributions they had already made.
Meanwhile, projects to protect the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, suffering from unprecedented coral bleaching, would receive a Aus$171 million boost.
“This is not just another budget”, Mr Morrison begins.
Government to persist with plans to cut the family tax benefit. These changes draw on a number of recommendations from the Board of Taxation’s Post-implementation Review into Division 7A and are expected to apply from 1 July 2018.
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Some of the measures announced in the budget show a level of innovative thinking that we would like to have seen applied more broadly.
