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the GST-nazi...

cormanngas

“We want states like New South Wales and Victoria and the Northern Territory to step back from their moratoriums on gas exploration and development of their resources,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“GST-sharing arrangements are a potential lever to encourage and incentivise the states and territories to develop their economies to their full potential.”

The Commonwealth Grants Commission – the independent body that carves up the GST pie – has indicated it will consider coal seam gas development as part of its 2018 update and 2020 review of the formula to split the tax take between jurisdictions.

In a discussion paper released late last week, the commission notes Queensland and South Australia have no bans on gas exploration or development, but all other jurisdictions (bar the Australian Capital Territory, which doesn’t have any gas reserves) have some form of restriction.

“The commission could take the view that all states that have CSG have the opportunity to exploit it and whether they do or not solely reflects policy choice,” it states.

If the commission assumed that states had the capacity to raise money from their gas resources, it could potentially withhold GST or give them a lower share in a similar way it now treats gambling revenues. It said the “same considerations” appled to mining uranium.

Cormann said that use of levers to encourage states and territories to develop their economies was “in the national interest”.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/01/gst-could-be-used...

 

not the first time, cormann shows his conman...

July 11 2014

Methinks Finance Minister Senator Cormann (Letters, July 10) protests too much with more contested hair-splitting and baffling arguments about how his Future of Financial Advice ‘‘improvements’’ (his words) don’t allow banks to pay staff in ways which skew their advice.

He claims to be removing ‘‘costly’’ red tape but even if that was true I’d rather take my chances with any necessary compliance costs than the financial advice-driven collapses a lack of regulation helped foster.

Since 2006 such disasters have affected 120,000 Australians and robbed their savings of $6 billion. Any costs of the original FOFA legislation are small beer compared to that.

 

Christopher Zinn Bondi

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/fofa-reforms-mathias-cormann-i...

the other GST-nazi is horizontal...

 

The distribution of the GST is among the hottest of political potatoes, and so it was little wonder that after Monday’s release of the Productivity Commission’s draft report on horizontal fiscal equalisation, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, steered well clear of any specific recommendations and kept to talk of a “fair go”.

While Morrison did speak of a general need to fix the system, he did nothing to indicate his preference for any of the specific recommendations in the report. This is no surprise given the zero-sum game of goods and services tax distribution, the commission’s recommendations would result in Morrison having to convince every government except Western Australia to be losers.

Perhaps the most accurate statement in the Productivity Commission draft report on horizontal fiscal equalisation (HFE) is when it notes that “there is a dearth of public understanding of how HFE works, and this is compounded by the lack of a strong neutral voice in public discussion”

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2017/oct/10/scott-morri...