Despite the rhetoric that Australian manufacturing is in crisis, is it really time to write it off? In this Q&A, Professor Sir Mike Gregory, Head of the Manufacturing and Management Division at the…
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There will be a myriad of issues debated at this week’s Tax Forum but top of the wishlist for many experts is reforming housing taxation. Housing makes up the lion’s share of household wealth in Australia…
You’d have to be a bastard, surely. To gamble away billions of dollars of other peoples’ money, playing the odds with their livelihoods, their retirement funds, their security. You’d have to be a bastard…
Periodic tax reform is necessary as governments respond to new patterns and forms of economic activity and the inevitable political pressures these changes create. Yet the politics of tax reform is politically…
Momentum is building behind the global campaign to impose a tax on transactions in financial markets, with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announcing plans to introduce the measure as…
Some very well-paid women want to use the Tax Forum to press the government to substantially subsidise the costs of nannies by allowing their costs to be tax deductible. They claim this is essential to…
Recent high prices for minerals have inspired a lot of companies and countries to start mining. But with a lead-time of up to five years for developing a mining operation, it is difficult to take advantage…
Trading in financial securities has sometimes been regarded as a “black box”. This is particularly the case in markets where there is increased uncertainty. The current world economy is a prime candidate…
The Federal government’s Tax Forum offers a unique opportunity to begin remedying some of the inefficiencies and inequities we are witnessing in our housing system. Housing in Australia has become an unaffordable…
Will Greece default and exit the Eurozone? The best-case scenario is a managed, orderly, partial default with the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a fund created in 2010 to manage Eurozone…
There is a contradiction at the heart of tax reform. Timid governments, worried about a voter backlash, do too little, too late. Yet in the medium to long term, major structural changes in the economy…
The chief executive of Swiss banking giant UBS, Oswald Gruebel, has quit following revelations of a $US2.3 billion fraud by “rogue trader” Kweku Adoboli. But the news will come as cold comfort for investors…
It is a shame that the GST is off the menu at October’s Tax Forum, because one of its central tenets – the exemption of basic food and beverages – deserves to be debated again. The exemption is basically…
Global markets have tumbled again this week, following the downgrading of Italy’s debt rating and a series of negative comments from leaders of the world’s financial institutions. International Monetary…
Media commentators, regulators, and the judiciary continually express their concerns over the independence of auditors and other accounting professionals when they prepare expert reports. Typically, this…
Europe is in crisis once again and this time it is deadly serious. At stake is not only the survival of the European currency, but also of the entire integration project. Collapse of the Euro could trigger…
Foster’s Group’s acceptance of a $12.3 billion takeover bid from global brewer SABMiller will see the ownership of some of Australia’s most popular beer brands, such as Victoria Bitter and Cascade, fall…
Most people have taken an online or magazine quiz promising to reveal information about their true personality, interests, or attitudes. These tests can be harmless fun. But there is a serious side to…
Spare a thought for Peter Costello. His successor as Federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has just been named Finance Minister of the Year by Euromoney magazine. It is a bit like seeing the plodding nerd at…
The Federal Government has taken significant steps in recent years to protect consumers from predatory lending practices, such as very high-interest “payday loans”. An unfortunate, though surely unintentional…
It’s true: many species will go extinct due to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change. We will have to make some hard decisions about where to invest conservation dollars for the best effect…
Sometimes good policy and good politics are the same thing. By tying together lessons learned from economist John Maynard Keynes and former president Harry Truman, Barack Obama is taking steps that may…
One aspect of housing and stock market bubbles continually repeats: the vast majority of economists either miss or deny their existence. In recent years, enormous asset bubbles have burst in many countries…
In one of the most significant moments of the 2010 federal election campaign, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott declared the Coalition’s unpopular WorkChoices policy “dead, buried, cremated.” In an interview…
While changes to the GST are not an explicit item on the Tax Forum agenda, they should be and the issue will arise anyway. A broad and comprehensive GST tax base along the lines of the New Zealand model…