Tax Reforms: an Unfinished Agenda or Finishing the Agenda?

By Phil Raskall

The time is ripe for tax reform, and fundamental reform at that. Not the agenda of Howard and corporate Australia but reform for people and community.

The underlying principle to remember is that taxation exists for the sole reason of building the sort of society that we, as a community, want. It provides the funds to enable the provision of those things that the private sector will not or cannot provide, with access to all that need services, and to explicitly redistribute market-outcome well-being to reflect our values of egalitarianism and a'fair go'. Whilst attention is often directed on the expenditure side of government, how we raise the funds to reflect those values and to achieve that fundamental outcome is of equal importance.

(Australian Options Summer 2005 no 43; pp5-9)