Australia faces economic problems down the road if three big, structural reform areas — housing affordability, the tax mix, and decarbonisation — are not addressed.
Personal income taxpayers are shouldering more of the burden, while less revenue is coming from taxes on companies, capital and consumption. Only major reforms will change these sustained trends.
Value added tax (VAT), virtually non-existent before 1960, has been the predominant form of consumption tax since the mid-1980s. Given that more than 160 countries now have a VAT, it is hardly surprising…