I was thinking about this today….they should get rid of people paying taxes in Australia like income tax,capital gains,luxury car tax….all taxes and replace it with a simple system of tax
Like 1% tax to be paid on every single transaction you do. Would that not be better and actually collect more taxes and makes it fair on everyone?
GST is applied on 99% of all items (very few exceptions) and on all services you buy. So, how is 1% going to get more income to Govt that 10% GST; let alone replace all the other taxes and duties
no its not. GST is only payable by the end consumer (suppliers gets input credits and get the gst they paid refunded). He is saying 1% on every transaction, no refunds or deductions on that 1%. thats different to the current way GST is colected.
@Jaduqimon: People who think everyone pay gst on almost everything are the same people who think you shouldn’t increase your income because you have to pay more tax
@Jaduqimon: OP just implemented a tax on the most vulnerable that effects 100% of their disposable income. Rich people laugh, welcome to texas.
@alikazi: cant have your cake and eat it too under the government- (just the gluttony of the political elite fattening their wages at the tax payer's expense)
@[Deactivated]: The woosh as that remark went over your head. Look up Hewson trying to explain how GST affects buying a birthday cake.
@spaceflight: There is GST on meals that someone else cooks/prepares for you but the vast majority of food does not have GST on it.
@dave999: There is no GST on "raw" ingredients so things like fruit and veg, meat, milk etc, but if you were to make something out of these ingredients like ice cream, there would be GST on that, so for that reason, there is GST on alot of things
@Qazxswec: There is GST specifically on desserts and snack foods, but the "raw ingredients" is pretty broad - fruit and veg, meat, milk are only a tiny amount of GST free food. For example tomato sauce, cheese, bread, bacon, frozen chips, cooking oil etc are all GST free.
See https://www.ato.gov.au/single-page-applications/calculatorsa…
Stay in school
No, go to trades school and get a trade - you'll be laughing when you earn 250K a year when you're 20.
(source - https://www.afr.com/property/residential/tradies-wages-jump-…)
That would work out way less for them, so if you pay 20,000 in income tax per year, for them to get that same amount of tax at 1% of your purchases, you would have to spend 2,000,000 a year
Some people here obviously have NO IDEA!
I beg you to do even the most elementary reading on a Tobin tax before posting.
It sounds like OP has done the most elementary reading, in that they learned of the idea of 1% tax on transactions. The problem is they stopped there.
I'm in the camp that a Tobin tax is still a feasible idea, just not as a way to fund tax revenues. It's also been made moot by the modern economy.
Or like… ask ChatGPT at least
Never encourage people like OP to do their own research.
On the other hand whatever you tell them they won't understand either.
That feeling when you've just hit the glass barbie and now think you can fix the world, but you forgot that you failed year 3 math.
OP clearly got A+ is methamatics.
For effort?
Honestly I've heard more intelligent things from people on the see through didgeridoo than OP.
The sentiment is correct.
The GST base could be broadened, so all chickens are taxed, and bread and cakes too, and the rate increased to 15% or 20% with offsetting income tax cuts, indexed, with pension increases and various super threshold increases.
Chickens don’t make money to spend money
Nor do bread and cakes!
In the hypothetical scenario where income tax is abolished, what happens to salaries? Do they remain the same or they go down because employers are like "We're gonna save money by reducing your salary but dont worry your income is still going to be better than it was before tax cuts"
Depends how expendable you are.
OP must be thinking about universal base pay. everybody gets paid the same and taxed the same. ok say 1%. It is not fair this world for eg. the vegans are paying the chicken excise.
1% tax?
Your usual weekly shop, fuel, groceries, alcohol, etc has about 25-35% tax.
Your maths don’t math.
On TRANSACTIONS.
Your read don’t read.
Sounds good to me. Without enough money to pay a police force we can all just steal what we want. There won't be enough money for the courts or a system of laws, so just slit Gina Rhinehart's throat and claim her mining empire as your own. Collecting the 1% probably won't even be feasible.
Without enough money to pay a police force we can all just steal what we want.
Or if you're in Victoria, you get both a police force and to steal as much as you want.
Speaking of Gina, I think Australia should transition to almost no taxes (certainly no more GST or personal income tax) and instead collect money on the nation's mineral wealth instead of giving it away for a fraction of a percent. Borrow ideas form Norway's sovereign wealth fund or the Saudi Aramco model. We might even be able to keep the NDIS and balance the budget at the same time. There's plenty of wealth in this country to go around.
Always seems like a good idea in theory, but getting "The government" to do it is incredibly difficult. Coalition would never introduce it it, and if Labor/anyone else tried to the minerals industry would pour money into ousting them from power. Not theoretical either: QLD Labor tried to do this exact thing and hike coal industry royalities. The Coal industry dumped about $40 million in advertising to get the Libs up at the last election. It's electoral suicide to introduce a policy like this.
Now, the interesting wrinkle is that while I though the Libs would/had immediately dropped the policy, now it looks like they're currently keeping it, though with deferred payment terms. How that evolves will be the rub - will the Libs hold the course or will the 'deferment' become a quiet cancellation of these debts?
"No personal income tax and no GST" is a pretty strong proposal to win votes though; if you have the details.
With such a strong proposition I don't think Gina or Clive or BHP or Rio or the rest of them combined would have a snowflake's hope in Alice Springs of countering it.
It would need to start being discussed and debated thoroughly at least 3 years out from an election though.
Of course this is too far outside of the box thinking for Australia's dweeby self-serving politicians though (across the spectrum).
But what if someone comes to slit my throat? And they won't accept my sovereign citizen claim or my Maritime flag?
Math not mathing. But logic is logicing.
Instead of imposing a 1 % tax, the government could introduce a 17% GST on every transaction and eliminate all forms of income tax. However, I support retaining business tax.
How would the government fund roads, hospitals, and other public services? In the same way it does now—by printing money.
I am not an economist, and I recognize that my reasoning may contain flaws.
that is the best way. increasing GST, obviously the number is debatable but it has to be way higher than it is now. And yes abolish income tax. whoever uses the most, pays the most taxes.
In the same way it does now—by printing money
If money can be printed, then so can the tax, right ?
However, the tax is a by-product of a society whose purpose is to service debt, by doing some 'meaningful' work.
JFC… yep, that’s enough OzBargain for me today.
Tax makes cents. Cheers
I originally read it as “remove and only tax the 1%”… then I realised that they meant “only tax at 1%…”
I haven’t had enough yet, the pursuit of bargains is relentless
We could start by taxing mega corporations that pay no or disproportionately low taxes
Current government is slowly getting around to that
Cute you believed that they do.
Cuter that you publicly announced that you've never read a government document/understand the procedures/have half a brain
Kinda amazes me that people don't understand that the government is public, i.e., you can look at every single document, vote, or sneeze in written, video, or audio form without interruption and no bias (technically nothing is without bias, so we'll say with negligible bias)
Labor DID do it, however the big fat orange (profanity) veto'd US corporations being part of the minimum 15% Global tax for Multi-Nationals.
So Apple and Facebook and the likes can just do whatever the (profanity) they want basically.
Like 1% tax to be paid on every single transaction you do.
Wait till you hear about GST, you are already paying 10% on every single transaction.
What if we got rid of it and paid 1% tho
I'm down for that as well.
Please don't be down, friend. Things will get better
No? You don’t pay gst on fruits, vegetable, meat, seafood and most breads and a few more other items that doesn’t consider end products. Stop spreading mis-informations
So most transactions, and certainly most of those that have higher price tags.
Wtf you mean so most transactions? Fruits, vegetable, meat and breads are everyday bought items by households, restaurants and everyone else?
@michaelTito: However, if you look at it compared to the vast amount of goods bought, especially by value, this is nowhere near the largest amount of transactions.
So what he said was wrong? We don’t pay gst on every transactions?
Mate you're really nitpicking over basically nothing. Must be sad to have nothing better to do.
@michaelTito: I never said you didn’t pay it on every transaction. I said you pay it on most transactions particularly by value. Read what I said.
@michaelTito: He was a bit wrong but not 100% :). GST isn’t on every transaction just most categories of goods and services. Personally I think it is good that GST isn’t on fresh foods because we need people to eat as healthily as possible.
@try2bhelpful: His whole statement is wrong. He said “you’re already paying 10% gst on every single transaction” which is not true.
Wtf you mean so most transactions? Fruits, vegetable, meat and breads are everyday bought items by households, restaurants and everyone else?
Yeah mate, most transactions for people are are NOT Fruits, vegetable, meat and breads, they make up a small % of the overall spend they do.
I was generallising as MOST transactions have 10% GST added.
restaurants
But when the restaurant that purchased those items GST free turns around and sells you a meal, that meal has GST on it as it has been value added to.
So you don’t pay gst on every transactions lol.
Ok… Well if you want to be like that, then yes you most likely pay GST as part of every transaction even when you buy GST free items as 99% of the time you'll buy something else that has GST on it when at the supermarket. LOL
@JimmyF: Nope I went out to buy some apple didn’t have to pay gst on that transaction. So you are wrong and spreading misinformation again
@JimmyF: wtf you mean most transactions for people are not fruits vegetables meat and bread. Do you know why gov made those items gst free? My dude stop spreading mis information on here.
@michaelTito: Michael, brother. Next time you're at coles or woolies, look at what's in the shopping carts of people all around you. It ain't mostly fruit and veg. It's cans of coke and dinosaur nuggies. Groceries are a fraction of the average household budget with much greater sums going to things like automotive, insurance, utilities and entertainment.
Also no gst on some medication.
Yet people think we pay GST on every transactions.
Stop spreading mis-informations
LOL far from spreading mis information, you pay GST on just about every transaction, sure a few selected items in the supermarket are GST but everything else isn't.
Out of your weekly pay, most transactions you spend your money on have GST, compared to a few selected items that a GST free.
Out of my weekly pay I pay my mortgage, buy meat fruits and vegetable and other grocery items. I pay barely half in GST lol. Mis-information machine goes wild in here.
Goes from paying gst on every transaction to just about every transaction after being called out is crazy
@michaelTito: So you don't pay bills like power, put fuel in the car, mobile plans, home internet, buy clothes or any of the many other supermarket items that have GST on them?
If so, that's a pretty sad life you live.
@JimmyF: I do pay gst on some transactions but not “every single transaction” like you said in your first reply that you lied about
People who think we pay gst in every single transactions are the same type of people who say “I refuse a pay rise because I don’t want to pay more tax”
people who say “I refuse a pay rise because I don’t want to pay more tax”
I don't think those people exist.
These people exist though:
people who say "I refuse to do overtime or get a second or third job because I don't want half of my extra labour hours going straight to the tax man, I'd rather spend that time with my friends and family"
With governments that piss money up to the wall, taxes will never be enough.
Right now they are looking at any possible way to extract more taxes so they can waste even more money than they already do.
Cough ndis cough
Brooo don't be broadly hating on the NDIS. It's super important, straight up an extension of Medicare, and it makes sure people who really need help actually get it.
The problem isn’t the NDIS itself, it’s the implementation that allows waste and dodgy operators taking advantage of a system that wasn’t set up well. That needs fixing first.
The NDIS should definitely keep growing—just in a sustainable way—because heaps more support is still needed. Just can't bleed funds.
These recent reforms announced by ndis are the opposite of what we want to happen:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/20/child…
Unfortunately the above changes don't fix the NDIS design flaws, all its doing is reducing costs by taking support away from kids that really need it.
It should not keep growing, the system is a rort, clients just get ripped off with their packages. The taxpayers get ripped off on what they get for the money. Insane amounts of money are allocated to single people. Nearly nothing about it is good, apart from the idea of it.
@brendanm: Reread the rest of my comment.
There's no way you'd be so purely negative of NDIS if you had any real exposure to it. I've first hand seen how much it's given so much benefit to struggling kids. Kids that can't speak being given a voice etc. Benefits that wouldn't have been achievable without the NDIS.
We're not Americans, we're Australians. This is the kind of shit our taxes should be getting spent on. Just need to clean up the design of it.
@JakeyJooJoo: Agree that kids need a version of NDIS and it needs to be tailored to their needs, particularly around improving their development. The Government does need to control the rorting that got out of control from the LNP not managing it properly. Frankly the Government should pull this back in house.
@JakeyJooJoo: My wife deals with it. It's a joke, the same results could be had while spending a fraction of the money. Also note that I said that the idea of it is good. The execution is terrible.
Do you think that one person receiving in excess of $1m seems reasonable?
Alternatively the government could just print up all the money it needs instead of going to the trouble of collecting taxes. Imagine all the productive things the people at tax office could do instead, not to mention all the tax accountants out there.
Does inflation mean anything to you?
Lol. It was just an alternate half baked idea in keeping with the spirit of the op's idea of 1% on all transactions.
So massive inflation? Just look at what happens in countries that used this idea.
Before the op edited their post, this was a thread for stupid ideas.
Sadly, the line between
Obvious Sarcasm
and
Naive Simpleton Brain Fart
has become terribly blurred.
It's challenging to joke when the genuine ideas of others are laughable.
Explain how you think 1% tax would yield more than 10% GST, car reg/fuel/LCT taxes, crazy high excise taxes, and bracketed income tax?