Research suggests this approach could boost household living standards by around 10%.
Articles on consumption tax
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Compared with other OECD nations, Australians pay much less tax than some headline statistics suggest.
Australia faces economic problems down the road if three big, structural reform areas — housing affordability, the tax mix, and decarbonisation — are not addressed.
Personal income taxpayers are shouldering more of the burden, while less revenue is coming from taxes on companies, capital and consumption. Only major reforms will change these sustained trends.
There are many potential reforms to the tax system that are revenue neutral, from broadening the tax base to replacing transaction taxes.
Simply increasing the GST rate would make for poor tax design. Instead, the government should broaden the base and lock in compensation measures.
Value added tax (VAT), virtually non-existent before 1960, has been the predominant form of consumption tax since the mid-1980s. Given that more than 160 countries now have a VAT, it is hardly surprising…
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Professor of Economics, University of Canberra
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Lecturer, School of Taxation ＆ Business Law, UNSW
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Professor, Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Law, University of Sydney
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Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
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Senior Lecturer in Macroeconomics, University of Glasgow
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Scientia Professor of Economics, UNSW