20th Jun 2018, 7:10 PM – Senate Treasury Laws Amendment (Personal Income Tax Plan) Bill 2018 - in Committee - Tax rates

The majority voted in favour of keeping items 12 and 13 of schedule 1 and the tables dealing with tax rates for resident taxpayers, non-resident taxpayers and working holiday-makers for the 2022-23 or the 2023-24 year of income as they are. This means that they will 'stand as printed'.

This vote took place after South Australian Senator Penny Wong (Labor) voted to oppose all those parts. Senator Wong explained that:

These are the tax rates that the government is seeking to change from 2024-25. What I would say to members of the crossbench and senators in this place is that we have two objections to this. One is a fundamental policy objection. It is a fiscal risk. It locks in a very fast-growing program which costs not only billions of dollars a year but grows at 12 per cent, which has consequences both for the budget and for economic and fiscal risk. It is also a fundamental restructure of our tax system. As I referred, one of the academics who made submissions to the Senate committee talked about this as being contrary to essentially 100 years of progressive taxation in this country. It is the wrong thing to do. I make the third point that it was well made by Senator Storer in his very careful and considered speech on the second reading that there is no reason to allow the government to hold these tax cuts, which would occur in six years time—you would have to elect Malcolm Turnbull twice—and make them a pre-condition of tax cuts which can be delivered next month. That is nothing other than a political strategy. As Senator Storer said:

There is no reason to legislate tax cuts four and six years away except to hold future parliaments to ransom and hold out to voters what may well prove to be false hopes.

Original amendment text

(8) Schedule 1, items 12 and 13, page 11 (lines 9 to 13), to be opposed.

(14) Schedule 2, item 2, page 13 (line 14) to page 14 (line 2), table dealing with tax rates for resident taxpayers for the 2022-23 or 2023-24 year of income to be opposed.

(16) Schedule 2, item 5, page 15 (lines 3 to 5), table dealing with tax rates for non-resident taxpayers for the 2022-23 or 2023-24 year of income to be opposed.

(18) Schedule 2, item 9, page 16 (lines 11 to 13), table dealing with tax rates for working holiday makers for the 2022-23 or 2023-24 year of income to be opposed.