No, humans, society or what-have-you is not rooted, evil, or unjust – but nearly all humans are capable of evil and unjust behaviour, especially when driven by greed, and especially, it seems, when part of a group of people whose raison d’etre is essentially to increase profits.

FWIW, my quasi-”socialist” utopia still has corporations, but corporations who are driven purely by the desire to produce better goods and services, and where all stakeholders in a corporation get some say over the distribution of profits.
Whether such a utopia is possible I have no idea, but I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime.

My only point is that corporations are just completely besides the point, and the second someone (eg Naomi Klein) starts blathering on about the evil deeds of corporations you can be fairly sure that they are a little over-cooked.

If you want to say that humans, society or what-have-you is rooted, evil, unjust or what-have-you, fine, just come out and say it. But quit pretending that corporations have anything to do with it.

And saying “groups of people are still people” is a bit like saying “groups of atoms are still atoms”, yet groups of atoms have properties like colour, smell, viscosity, hardness etc. etc. that don’t apply to individual atoms.
Likewise, there are various properties that matter when dealing with corporations that aren’t meaningful when dealing with individuals.

As far as equity being concerned with opportunities vs outcomes: yes, equality of opportunity is the primary concern, but I also happen to believe that there are plenty of people who work very hard, and contribute an enormous amount to society at relatively low rates of renumeration, and others that enjoy very comfortable lifestyles largely due to good fortune rather than much in the way of genuine exertion. (Needless to say, I don’t consider myself a member of the former group.)
On that basis for starters, I think there is a substantial case for redistribution that goes beyond simply ensuring that there is a good safety net for those at the bottom of the heap. There are other reasons I’d prefer to be living in society where disposal incomes don’t vary excessively, but ultimately as I said, it is a personal preference – not something I can logically demonstrate to be an objectively “better” outcome.

Also, $100k is frighteningly little these days. I assume you would have some sort of offsetting welfare payments for eg families, but it is an extremely low threshold. I know that people like you don’t believe that people like me exist, but I would move overseas if Australia had that kind of taxation. That implies a cost to overall prosperity – not to mention the cost of having so much greater a proportion of GDP spent, probably badly, by the government – expenditure which contains very little price information, which is the most valuable information in the market.

Also, why does your conception of equity require highly progressive taxation? I don’t need an answer because as you say the issues have been canvassed but I just want to point out that it is easy to think that equity should be concerned with opportunities and not outcomes.

The corporations thing is nonsense – I cited a common green party belief which apparently you partially subscribe to. But corporations are legal fictions. Really there are only people.

As for corporations being the evil slaughteres of mother nature and oppressors of labour, sure, a few are, but those problems are addressed by policy that targets that behaviour, not a blanket tax that punishes even the most benign corporations.

Also, I didn’t see anything in the paper to suggest raising personal taxes – but maybe I read too quickly (I did skim a bit). Obviously, of course, there would be an implicit raise in tax rates on dividend income, but I don’t think that’s what you meant.

Do you really think the Government needs more tax money? Remember that it could borrow a lazy $10bn odd with virtually no impact whatsoever, and could fairly cheaply borrow up to about $100bn (IIRC) – that is a big number.

I will try and grab a copy of that Allens paper on harmonisation, too, or chat to one of them about it – I wonder how they allowed for private business structuring.

What happens to investor behavior….interesting

It would bid up lower yield high growth stocks. Infrastructure stocks with deferred tax schemes become more attractive while highish yield stocks would get clocked.

So resources stock would basically go through the roof with this as they are historically low dividend payers.

How about capital returns and buy backs? That would make that sort play much more attractive suppose as it would cut out dividends and allow people to take gains on the Cap gains rate. Wouldn’t the overall amount of dividends fall?

I’m sorry I’ve trodden on your priors. My argument is not from first principles – other than that principle that says you should minimise costs and maximise gains.

Of course other things being equal you’d like to eliminate double taxation. The question is, what do you get for doing so, and can you get something better. The answer is that dividend imputation is keeping us from something like a 19% company tax rate – and a 19% company tax rate without dividend imputation is a lot better than a 30% tax rate with it.

These ideas are written up here. (pdf)

And JC that would sent stock prices up, not down – lowering the cost of capital.

How do you justify an elimination of imputation? You can’t justify double taxation on any grounds. It would trounce the stock market and would raise the cost of capital as a result of making our current account deficit more expensive to fund.

Eliminating imputation could simply be considered as another tax on capital when you include the cap gains tax.

Tax food, for goodness sake. Imagine the reductions which could be made available through income tax.

Are you proposing that as an incentive for weight loss, Niall?

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You got it Ken P. Market economics or speculating about the future makes everyone an economist. There isn’t going to be a recession in oz for the next two years is my bet. Theres too much stimulus (tax cuts) and potential stimulus (rate cutting) if things start to slow down.

There are few head winds such as high interest rate levels but there are also some terrific tail winds coming from resources which is a gift that will keep on giving for some time. Fair value of the Australian dollar is close to 1.30 to 1.40 according to Goldies and Lehman bros when the terms of trade is taken into account. The Aussie doll will be over parity or if the big buck turns it will make big highs against other major currencies.

US GDP was just in. It was positive was +.6%. I would actually take a reasonable bet that the US does not actually fall into recession, or if it does it will be very shallow.

World’s OK : credit markets are fixing themselves up and stocks, particularly US stocks look reary reary reary cheap. Despite some negative housing numbers stocks of large home builders in the US have actually started to rise significantly and let’s not forget that the banks have had a great rally from their lows. A positive yield curve does wonders to sweep things under the table.

It’s ok to be optimistic from now on.

One caveat though, we can’t afford any big policy mistake.

If there’s one place that looks worrying it’s Europe as the High Euro, a tight arsed central bank and very slow reform could kill them. This time next year people will be talking about Europe’s economic problems

Very few countries double tax dividends as ordinary income. A number give you a credit irrespective of the underlying tax borne (more expensive), a number tax you at different rates on dividends and capital income as opposed to ‘personal exertion’ income, some exclude a portion of dividends from assessment. At the company level, a number of countries have deductible dividends (which would provide cost of capital neutrality), some in effect a deduction for dividends (ie a tax credit for distributed profits) and others tax retained (ie undistributed) profits (like Australia’s old private company tax). If we scrapped imputation, presumably we would replace it with something? Which would you suggest?

If the only thing you suggest is scrapping refundability, isn’t that a bit regressive?

Also, practically, the ridiculous proposition of paying over 80 per cent tax (which was the situation in Australia prior to imputation) led to incredible effort being spent in avoidance (fair enough, too). That can hardly be considered efficient.

Finally, I agree with cutting corporate tax rates – note that that would make imputation ‘cheaper’ at a stroke :)

without any desired structural effect.

Basic fairness? avoid double-taxation and the ridiculous distortions that used to produce? Encourage share ownership (and hence more risk-tolerant equity investments as opposed to debt investments)?

It might not lower the cost of capital (although surely it should?) but it accomplishes other aims, doesn’t it?