Anti-gst? You've Been Bluffed, Stupid
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday June 26, 2000
Complainants agin the GST are incontrovertibly one-eyed. Take brewers. Their campaign to kill 10 per cent GST on beer, which is a luxury item, is hypocrisy. They hide the fact they are taking 37 per cent wholesale sales tax remission.
The lucrative political lobbies and the Labor Party have bluffed the nation's lower IQs. The Labor Party particularly has preyed upon their less mentally endowed constituency. Just untruthful childish adversarialism. Sure, we all lose on the one side on July 1, households, business and government (yes, government too). But the other side of the equation is buckets of tax remission and payments in hand.
Anyway, if there be a short-term deficit, the nation needs a new tax, of which this is one kind, for the years to come. Tax on spending instead of tax on income has been a growing benefit around the world. The ignoramuses should belt up.
Frank Hainsworth, June 21 Burleigh Waters.Missing in action would be the appropriate terminology for the increasing number of Federal Government ministers and their Democrat comrade-in-arms, Meg Lees, who will be conveniently absent from Australia in July for the imposition of the GST.
Kim Beazley must be rubbing his hands with glee.
Eric Stanley Palm, June 23 Surry Hills.
John Howard and his Government are on a hiding to nothing over the introduction of the GST, especially if defeated at the next election. The States will reap most of the rewards of the new tax system, the media mates have given it heaps of stick and the Federal Labor Party promises to ``almost certainly" roll back portions of the tax, meanwhile criticising and amending the legislation ad nauseam. The Federal ALP, of course, laughs up its sleeve as it thinks of the billions it will have if, and when, it regains government: billions for stacking bureaucracies, for jobs for the boys, for unchecked welfare, for useless ATSIC and for embracing, unconditionally, certain fascist dictators of Asia, a la Keating/Soeharto. Beazley is on a big bonus to nothing but he's still blowing it.
John Cosgrove, June 22 Watsons Bay.
Annette Sampson's column (Money, June 21) clearly shows why some self-funded retirees will be worse off under the GST.
If a retiree aged 62 has more than $550,000 of undeducted contributions in an allocated pension, the minimum income that must be taken under the Government's rules will exceed $30,000, and it will be tax-free.
The Government's post-GST retiree bonus payments cut out at an income of $30,000, and with no benefit accruing from the reduced income-tax rates because no tax is being paid, the retiree has to absorb all the additional cost of the GST without any compensation.
Anyone working with an after-tax income of $30,000 pre-GST will receive after July 1 a tax cut of approximately $22 a week.
Some retirees will receive nothing. So much for the promise that ``no-one will be worse off under the GST".
Ian Nicholls, June 22 Baulkham Hills.
So, in summarising your GST article (Herald, June 15, I can offer my children the following as GST-free snacks: frog legs, smoked eels, goose eggs, quail, haggis, herring, raw kangaroo, kidney, smoked kippers, linseed, tofu, snails, octopus, oysters, pate{AAC}, rollmops or tongue.
Goodbye chips and doughnuts, hello gourmet living.
Heather Willis, June 18 Dee Why.
I am probably like most people who have come to accept the GST with a high degree of trepidation. But unlike most, I plan on accepting it with a high dose of healthy cynicism.
Come June 30, I'm going to crack open a bottle of champagne and drink to a bygone era when no-one gave a damn about WST, GST, PAYE, and embrace the new era with my arms wide open and pockets fully lined.
Heck, come 9pm I might put my clock a full three hours forward just so I can get over the anticipation.
Why stop there? I want to be the first person to pay the GST (in an official sense because I have already paid it on some of my memberships). At 11.59, GST eve, I'll be in my local 7-Eleven store with a packet of Twisties in hand waiting for the clock to strike 12 just so that I can feel it's all been worth it.
Ben Folino, June 22 Newtown.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald
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