Carbon Tax Released

Finally the full details of Julia Gillard's carbon tax has been released, but as soon as I checked the Commonwealth Treasury website and was diverted to an Australian government website about the new policy, I became annoyed because it was just not clear how much I was going to get. Like the Budget that Labor introduced that cut little bits of spending on a thousand different things, thereby spreading out the pain, it seems as if the carbon tax follows the same philosophy whereby the compensation is spread out over a large number of people, not just low-income people but also pensioners, people with children, people with certain welfare cards, and so forth. It was really confusing.

One of the main features of the compensation is that the tax-free threshold would increase from $6000 to $18000. For someone earning over $18000 per year this is an extra $1800 per year in your pocket ((18000-6000)*0.15=$1800). In my opinion, this is not ideal because this $1800 would go to everyone earning over $18000 a year, including those who earn millions of dollars per year. I have stated in another blog post that I would have preferred to see an increase in the low income tax offset so that millionaires are not compensated.

In addition to this increase in the tax free threshold, there will also be, according to this Herald Sun article on the carbon tax, additional compensation that presumably will come from tax cuts that will be paid to singles earning below $50000: "Individuals will get all extra costs compensated up to an income of $50,000. The compensation means an individual now on $50,000 a year will get $303 in assistance, to cover a $304 rise in their cost of living."

This carbon tax compensation system is far too complicated. I have no idea how much I will get and when I will get it, and I suspect many other Australians will not bother to figure out what they will get because it seems to be dribs and drabs from all sorts of places. The government seems to have divided the benefits into a million different categories.

Furthermore, as I feared, the tax will be levied on only 500 emitters and will only apply if the material is burned. This I fear will mean that companies can dodge the tax by exporting it to countries that have lax environmental laws. What would have been better is a mining tax based on the energy content of what is dug out of the ground. Given that Labor caved in to the big miners and the mining tax discussion is now dead, we must live with what we have, which is the carbon tax and the future transition into an ETS. The system will also be linked in to the international carbon price, and this will hopefully coordinate carbon emission reduction objectives all around the world and hopefully cut off the loophole whereby companies export resources to other countries to dodge the carbon tax.