Should Wealthy People Be on a Version of The "Cashless Welfare Card"

sarahlump on 18/04/2020 - 06:18

The GST is not proportional to income. Very poor people pay the same amount as very wealthy.

If multi-millionaires and even wealthier were forced to use a cashless card they could be charged a higher more proportionate amount of GST.

I also feel that many businesses would relish charging a millionaire $20 for a carton of milk.

I also feel that the super-rich would call in their corporate army to burn the place down if somebody tried to implement it(but that's just the cynic in me).

Just on the merit of whether GST should be proportionate to income, should the uber rich be on a higher rate of gst with a special shopping card?
(ps don't say this is just one of their fancy exclusive credit cards)

Poll Options

  • 4
    Proportionate GST no card
  • 19
    Proportionate GST card
  • 615
    Same GST
Financial

closed Comments

    • callum9999 on 21/04/2020 - 16:02

      Do you think you're (to quote the OP) "uber rich"? Because if you're classifying your income as "over $100k" I'm not sure you are.

      It's the "uber rich" who, proportionally, pay less. Not that I agree with the complete mess charging different amounts of GST based on income would be.

      • roh008 on 21/04/2020 - 16:08

        well depends how you look at it. a $50M yacht has at least $5M GST - that would be more than a lifetimes' earning for some people.

        • callum9999 on 21/04/2020 - 17:17

          Hence the word "proportionally". GST is viewed as a regressive tax as the poorest are charged more as a proportion of their income than the wealthiest. Whether the wealthy can pay more in a single purchase than the typical person would pay in their lifetime is irrelevant to that point.

          I know a lot of people on here like to solely focus on actual amounts, but that doesn't make much sense if you're assessing the impact on the person - which is what people who want progressive tax systems care about.

          When debating tax etc. it's pretty important to set out what your definition of a good/just system is at the beginning. For me it's about equality. If for you it's about rewarding business achievement etc. then fine, but you therefore have a different (and arguably incompatible) end goal - meaning a discussion doesn't work.

          • roh008 on 21/04/2020 - 17:29

            @callum9999: GST is not the tax to do that. Not really worth discussing it further as they have CGT and income tax etc to handle that.

            • callum9999 on 22/04/2020 - 01:17

              @roh008: Which is why I said EXACTLY that - which also has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the post anyway.

    • AdrianW on 22/04/2020 - 18:49

      Exactly.

      The Op's statement "Very poor people pay the same amount as very wealthy" is patently false. Very poor people are buying less so are paying less GST. People with more money tend to spend more and therefore are paying more GST.

  • sarahlump on 21/04/2020 - 20:00
    -2

    I feel like I've become Ozbargain famous :)

    • brendanm on 21/04/2020 - 20:53
      +8

      There's good famous, and bad famous.

      • [Deactivated] on 21/04/2020 - 22:16
        +7

        I think the word you are looking for is infamous.

        You really sarahlumped that comment.

        • brendanm on 22/04/2020 - 06:30

          Correct, nice new verb.

        • sarahlump on 22/04/2020 - 07:42
          -3

          sounds like the price of fame is high for some.
          I've mostly just been using this post to get golden content for tweets, some of yall are also now famous on twitter :P

          • Quaker on 22/04/2020 - 10:45

            @sarahlump: Sharing the love with your comrades.
            I hope some of them pointed out that your idea sounded like you came up with it while having a brain fart.

            • brendanm on 22/04/2020 - 13:44
              +1

              @Quaker: I'd say most of the commietranshooker set likely have the same ideals.

          • brendanm on 22/04/2020 - 13:47

            @sarahlump: What's your twitter? I'm sure it would have some quotable quotes.

          • Randolph Duke on 22/04/2020 - 18:23
            +2

            @sarahlump: Poor form and misuse of the community if that was your actual goal.

    • zealmax on 21/04/2020 - 23:56

      Sara Lee is famous. Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee. I don't like my tax dollars going to noise.

      • [Deactivated] on 22/04/2020 - 16:05

        Nobody doesn't…

        Double negatives?

        DOUBLE NEGATIVES!?

        Flips table

  • The Magic Pudding on 21/04/2020 - 23:03

    This is a stupid thread but I've had a few so what the fk.
    The keep tax simple principle shouldn't be abandoned lightly, I'd take another tack to slake my grievances.
    As I said to a delivery guy today apropos of "where do you want me to put this", we should get all those richer than us up against the wall.

  • zzzsianzzz on 22/04/2020 - 01:25

    time for op to hit the books during lockdown. will you want to be rich? your idea sounds off, wrong country, wrong era.

    if im a robber i know who to rob. people with cards. lol.

  • superuser on 22/04/2020 - 10:33

    When and why do we have to pay tax?

    • danishcapitalist on 22/04/2020 - 12:23

      Interesting bit of history, federal income tax was brought in during world war 1 as a 'temporary' tax to fund the war effort. Then the war ended, but like most taxes, once introduced they are rarely abolished as promised.

  • kaleidoscope on 22/04/2020 - 12:29
    +1

    GST should and must be the same for every person. Taxation system already takes care of things fairly when it comes to income.

  • Croshema on 22/04/2020 - 13:35

    Did I miss where most people think think yearly income or net worth starts to qualify the person as rich?

    • [Deactivated] on 22/04/2020 - 14:19

      Does it really matter? No matter where you draw the line, there’s always going to be someone just on either side of it.

      What do you class as rich?

      (I don’t agree with the ops idea).

      • kaleidoscope on 22/04/2020 - 18:52

        Yearly income is not indication of your richness. Because believe it or not, not everyone make good use of that additional income for investing into future. Specially when most just adjust expenses to match the income.

        • Croshema on 22/04/2020 - 20:24

          That would be why I also offered net worth at a wealth indicator in my original comment.

  • ShoeJunkie on 22/04/2020 - 13:35

    The thing about the "uber" rich is that we want them to spend MORE. So charging an indirect tax isn't really going to get the best outcome because they will just avoid buying goods or find a way around it.

    In the above example, they would just avoid buying milk or use a proxy to achieve the same result. Implementing such things will also be beyond annoying.

    Having said that, applying a higher income tax is the best mechanism in ensuring that they pay their fair share.

  • CJ31 on 22/04/2020 - 14:28
    +3

    1. When the GST was introduced welfare and minimum tax rates were aised to offset the impact of the tax on low income earners.

    2. the income tax scales already escalate. The more you earn, the higher percentage goes in tax. Your sliding scale would just be duplicating this. Someone paying 50% tax, has to earm $2 to buy $1 worth of milk ($1 for the milk, $1 for the income tax).

    3. Millionaires? They aren't what they used to. There are plenty of old ladies and gents in homes in Sydney who would qualify as millionaires, and many of them live week to week on pension payments. You really want to charge them $20/l of milk.

    What you should be looking for is permanent increases in welfare. Not as generous as the current covid $1200+rent per fortnight but a lot more generous than the old $550 per fortnight (10-15 years out of date).

    As for the uber-rich you should be looking at death duties if you want to claw back money. But death duties tend to have problems too (ie people fleeing with their cash to tax havens).

  • netjock on 22/04/2020 - 19:16

    Wealth magically appeared and we must take it off these people who are not worthy of it.

  • AustriaBargain on 22/04/2020 - 20:21

    RIch people do pay a lot more GST because they buy a lot more stuff. A poor person who can never afford to buy anything will never pay a single cent of GST.

  • The Magic Pudding on 23/04/2020 - 00:14

    It's all Google and Amazon and Ebay's fault, if they were paying their tax as they should, we wouldn't have to work on fridays.

  • Moderatorscotty on 23/04/2020 - 07:34

    That's enough discussions and OP has claimed fishing the content for other use, i.e. trolling.

    /thread.

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