Liberal Party's Tax Policy for 2008

I have tried to match up the tax brackets that the Liberal Party announced as their election kick off with data for who is paying income tax from the 2003-2004 ATO Tax Statistics Report. This was the most up to date rundown of tax numbers I could find that were publicly available.

It isn't perfectly close, but near enough, despite the aged data of the net tax.

For comparison the Liberal Party brackets to how the ATO report had them ordered. The Liberal party policy:

$0 - $6,000
$6,001 - $34,000
$34,001 - $80,000
$80,001 - $180,000
$180,001 +

The nearest I could get to them from the ATO data:

$0 - $8,243
$8,244 to $33,692
$33,693 to $81,134
$81,135 to $187,591
$187,592 +

The tax in the graphs is net tax for that bracket, not the cumulative tax amounts. From that data I really question the need for the 15c and 40c brackets. Income tax may as well just be collapsed into 0c, 30c and 45c; or 0c, 30c and 42c.

Even simpler, just have a 30c bracket and have some form of high-end property tax. However, it is obvious that the government is fat off the middle class. A policy of tax relief may be better served by splitting the 30c bracket into two, say a 23c one and 30c one, that would bring tax gains to a large number of tax payers.

Update

A similar analysis of the Labor Party tax policy.
Permalink, Liberal Party's Tax Policy for 2008, Oct 2007, cam
avocadia:
But Labor would have just three tax rates - 15, 30 and 40 per cent. The 30 per cent rate would apply to incomes between $37,000 and $181,000, he said.

SMH

Close enough to what you thought. I agree with you though, I think he should have bit the bullet and just gone for a long tax-free threshold and then a long 30% rate, then 40%. The states can work out any high end property tax.
cam: That looks better. I think the 37c bracket is unnecessary. Be better if labor dumped the 15c one, but I am guessing they prefer to churn through education tax breaks. I prefer the simplicity of Labor's plan there despite it being 2013 before they kick in.

btw how did you make the text blue?
cam: heh errant 'a' tag without an href. Interesting bug.
avocadia: I going to guess that I didn close the anchor correctly and CherryPy added the closing tag rather than fix the stray opening tag.
cam: Yeh, I use BeautifulSoup for the xthmlising of comments, so it probably did that. Kid templates are xhtml so they get bitchy (read 500) if it isnt perfect xml.

More Reading on Tax brackets

Most Popular on South Sea Republic

The articles that have been viewed the most:

Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix

Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for Phoenix, Scottsdale and Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area. This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most; My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are AZ88, Postinos, Bomberos with Grazie, Humble Pie, Orange Table, The Vig, Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on phoenixeatsout.com

Most Popular Hikes in Arizona

Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak. For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in Tom's Thumb and Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.

Alternate Australian Constitutions

Between 2004 and 2009 this site, southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues. One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome: The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.

Archives For South Sea Republic

South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then; The articles are ordered by views.

Who Is Cam Riley

Cam Riley I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident. I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end. I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.

I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now. The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.

Websites Worth Reading

Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;