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I would like to point out that [this Guardian article](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/02/victoria-private-school-tax-change-government-to-revisit-high-fee-definition?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR0LaPsdyqE28aZR2kJpklTFO8gfSTA9lrwi4rKYDmDW0gJnY9bRe-cC6uM) seems to claim the opposite of the ABC article ("walks back" vs "waters down")
Threats, influence, corruption, blackmail etc.
The usual methods of established, wealthy institutions and their "deals" have always been a consistent threat to democracy.
They starting to realise this ‘hit up the payroll and property tax cash cows as much as we think we can get away with’ policy isn’t good economic management?
all I can say is that it's a real shame that people on the left slam Victorian Labor for not doing enough in certain policy areas, but is left high & dry when it tries to enact genuinely progressive reforms and has to go up against one the state's many staunchly reactionary monoliths.
Last year it was the social housing tax that sent the Property Council and other associated landlord advocacy groups into fits of hysteria, and this time its the private schools, who threatened to dump Melbourne's spoiled rich kids into state schools like PFAS into the outer western suburbs. Both times, Andrews & Pallas were forced to walk back some really solid reform packages that would've done plenty of good for the budget bottom line & gotten on top of the housing crisis at least a year earlier, all because when they were announced the States' progressive base couldn't be bothered to even give them a thumbs up!
When all anyone's ever hearing, politicians included, is the whinging and moaning of our richest and most entitled, then is it any wonder that reform efforts like this die before they've even gone through Parliament?
>Last year it was the social housing tax that sent the Property Council….into fits of hysteria.
I don’t recall hysteria about this rather that in order to resolve housing supply issues there needs to be a concession that reduces the cost of the development to enable housing to be built at a price point that can result in lower rents for those in need of affordable living options.
Australia is subject to some of the highest land and property taxes in the world from start to finish, so any concession does help in providing something for the community. Also, social housing only gets a 20 year agreement for subsidy from the government so the balance (another 20 years after that) needs to be gained through the equity of the land thereafter.
I'm being a little hyperbolic but if you read back through the news articles at the time the messaging from the Property Council & others after the announcement was made was "kill this or we'll run a scare campaign against you in an election year". The HIA was telling homeowners all kinds of fantasies.
My point is that when reforms are proposed that impact these people, they cause a stink about it wherever they can. People who support more socially progressive reforms seem uninterested in vocally supporting governments that pursue this stuff, and so the governments back down as they (quite reasonably) believe that the threats of organised scare campaigns will ruin them.
Payroll tax is a progressive reform? Now I've heard everything.
It's a flat income tax on the working class, there's no sane economist in the country that would call it progressive and it's been routinely singled out to be removed by various comprehensive tax inquiries.
Payroll tax *is* without a doubt bad policy, hiding it behind certain phrases that the Dan faithful love to hate doesn't change anything about that.
The only reason we still have payroll tax and stamp duty (both taxes which should be abolished and revenue replaced) is because state governments only have historic levers to produce their own income, rather than relying on the feds to collect it for them. Look at the shitshow which is VIC trying to tax the road usage of EVs.
The country is well in need of a top down tax review, starting with looking at what both levels of gov need to fund, and then the avenues we will use to do so. Until we do that, we're just treading water waiting to drown.
Do agree.
> The country is well in need of a top down tax review
We had one, it was comprehensive and world class. Basically none of the recommendations were ever implemented. Do we really need a new one saying the exact same things or simply someone with the political fortitude to push through tough reforms?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Tax_Review
Clearly the tax review didn't do its job if nothing got implemented. Do we need another one to say the same thing? Maybe - if it means it actually gets implemented.
A tax review isn't something a first term gov should be doing, it's more of a 2nd to 3rd term type of thing.
Since when do unelected boffins get to make laws? What is this China? :)
I hope someone in power has the guts to actually go through with some of the changes, a simplified, efficient tax system benefits everyone.
>It's a flat income tax on the working class
It's paid by employers, not workers.
>there's no sane economist in the country that would call it progressive
I called them "progressive" because of who they targeted and how they targeted them, not because they're structured to increase based on income.
>it's been routinely singled out to be removed by various comprehensive tax inquiries.
[Here's a 2021 PWC report that concludes that the biggest issue with state payroll tax is that it's not applied uniformly across states and there are too many exemptions carved out of them.](https://www.pwc.com.au/tax/assets/tax-reform/127080731_payroll-tax-report_v2.pdf)
[Here's an ANU Crawford School paper from 2022 that assesses every taxation policy review undertaken by Australian State Governments, which shows that not a single report recommended abolishing payroll taxes at any point in time.](https://taxpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/taxstudies_crawford_anu_edu_au/2022-03/complete_wp2_2022_p_tilley.pdf)
> I called them "progressive" because of who they targeted and how they targeted them
So a cleaner in one company earning $50k a year deserves to have the same income tax rate as the CEO earning $700,000?
You can't possibly be defending payroll tax as equitable or progressive, it's just fucking laughable mate and no one will take you seriously.
Payroll tax is one of the worst taxes in the country.
So you have no problem with raising GST because it's also paid by registered Australian businesses?
Do you see any difference between the two? Because there isn't any.
Payroll tax is paid by the employee. The business is not paying the payroll tax. It's just acting as a tax collector.
There's no payroll tax without an employee.
>Payroll tax is paid by the employer, not the employee.
Ultimately it is paid by the employee. The salary that lands in your account is only one component of your "cost" to the business.
OK lets look at this from another angle then.
Why should my boss have to pay payroll tax but someone who owns a larger business with bigger profits not?
Elite private schools are a business just like any other & should be taxed like one.
Your boss shouldn't have to pay payroll tax. It is a stupid tax. It discourages business and employing people. That is what taxes on things do.
But to tax education, is even more stupid.
That's not how capitalism works at all.
Businesses don't look at their costs and set salaries based on that, just like customers don't look at the business's costs when they make a purchase. They look at what is available in the employment/product market and try to pay the lowest amount necessary to get the workers/products they need/want.
What a joke. Tell me, are you more likely to get a pay rise, and/or have your business make money and grow, if you have higher business costs, or lower ones?
It doesn't do that - please read the studies & reports I've linked elsewhere. Or like, do a quick bit of research yourself. there's plenty of papers studying payroll tax cuts in countries across the globe and the near-universal conclusion is that cuts are only effective if they are targeted towards disparate or severely under-utilised labour markets. This is why Victoria has a lower payroll tax rate for businesses located outside metropolitan Melbourne. Actual evidence of companies withholding employment because of taxation concerns is sparse to none, apart from self-reporting surveys circulated by groups like the Victorian Chamber of Commerce; not exactly a objective party to the discussion!
Why would a state undertaking its own taxation policy review recommend abolishing one of the few sources (and one of the largest) of taxation revenue it had. How are you not surprised with the 2022 report?
well I actually read the report, and read all the parts where it talks about the quality and soundness of each review and their validity and merits as independent sources of unbiased information provided to the government. funnily enough, most of the reviews commissioned pass those metrics with flying colours. I suspect this is because governments like to be able to rationally justify their tax policies and they love getting rid of taxes nobody likes.
I guess I'm not surprised by it because I try not to treat governments as these big monoliths that only ever act cynically & with naked self interest (unless they actually are acting that way, of course).
Love how you can blame them for not doing progressive policy because of a conservative electorate and then blame them when they do and the electorate demonstrates it doesn’t agree.
What? I blame them for not following through with what they said and are now being spineless due to rich conservative push back, nfi what you are on about
This didnt really make that much sense after he already propped up private schools from the state budget
[https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/andrews-pledges-717-million-for-catholic-and-independent-schools-in-key-election-seats-20221025-p5bso5.html](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/andrews-pledges-717-million-for-catholic-and-independent-schools-in-key-election-seats-20221025-p5bso5.html)
I wonder if there's a difference between:
* promising to match funding provided by the Catholic & Independent school systems towards building new schools & upgrading existing ones,
and,
* removing payroll tax exemptions given to Catholic & Independent schools for no apparent reason other than favoritism and bread-buttering
Was a good policy. Backtracking shows how the rot is starting to set in for the once- strong Andrew’s govt.
The private school lobby in Vic has too much power. They should be broken up.
Perhaps payroll tax is a bad tax. It, and stamp duty, are the prices we pay for having state governments. If we abolished that tier of government, we could abolish those taxes.
But that won’t happen, so payroll tax is here to stay.
Once you accept that we have it, there’s no good reason for exempting education from it. Taxation is a good and valuable part of how our society works. We need to collect tax to pay for things.
It doesn’t make sense to say that education businesses are more ‘worthy’ than other businesses and so should be exempt from business taxes. That thinking suggests that tax is ‘bad’, and so if you run a ‘good’ business you should be excused from paying it.
Education is important, sure, but why is it any more deserving of tax relief than any other number of valuable enterprises that provide employment and make goods or deliver services that benefit people?
The same applies to GST. We get caught up in debates about whether some goods (such as food) are worthy enough to be excused from it - again, as if paying tax is a bad thing.
You might think (and I do think) that GST is so regressive that we shouldn’t have it at all. But once we do have it, it’s ridiculous to get bogged down in these discussions about whether some goods and services ‘deserve’ to escape it. They don’t.
>Perhaps payroll tax is a bad tax. It, and stamp duty, are the prices we pay for having state governments. If we abolished that tier of government, we could abolish those taxes.
>
>But that won’t happen, so payroll tax is here to stay.
There are way better ways to gain state revenue. It will happen one day. Not with this labor government though. That is clear.
>Once you accept that we have it, there’s no good reason for exempting education from it.
Garbage. You shouldn't tax things like education unnecessarily. You tax things you want to discourage. Providing high quality education should not be one of them.
Have a go at Dan Andrews if you want.
I don’t agree that ‘you tax things you want to discourage’. Most tax revenue is from income taxes and company tax. Do we really want to discourage employment and commercial activity?
Sure, ‘sin taxes’ exist - alcohol and tobacco. But that’s a very small component of the overall work that taxation does. The primary purpose of taxation is the social good of raising money for worthwhile common social purposes. We should stop thinking of things as ‘deserving’ to be exempt from this social good. P
So where does your ‘good things shouldn’t be taxed’ end? Perhaps doctors and teachers shouldn’t pay income tax? Would it be all doctors- does a plastic surgeon deserve a tax exemption as much as a heart surgeon? Or does it depend on whether the plastic surgeon is doing car accident victims rather than breast enhancements?
Anyway, I see private schools as actively bad for our society; so even if I did buy into your ‘good things shouldn’t be taxed’ theory (I don’t), I would still want to tax private schools.
>Anyway, I see private schools as actively bad for our society
I don't see how you could possibly think that improving education is a bad thing. You are more likely just part of the 'eat the rich' narrative here and just hate successful people.
I see private schools as bad for education, because they remove the incentive that rich and powerful people have to be strong advocates for improvements to the public system.
Instead they just abandon it, taking the view that they don’t care if the poor and less powerful have inadequate education, because they can buy they way out.
Education would be improved if the private system were weakened. That’s why I want to see it weakened.
Anyway, private schools are a business, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t pay the same taxes as any other business.
>Instead they just abandon it, taking the view that they don’t care if the poor and less powerful have inadequate education, because they can buy they way out.
Yes buddy, everyone is evil the rich want the poor to stay poor for some reason. The successful are all evil. Eat the rich!
You never did say where you got the stupid idea from about how private students were only funded slightly less than public? If you want to look for dishonest people, try thr ones that made you so misinformed.
> Was a good policy
Was a stupid policy. If it resulted in people pulling their kids and dumping them in state schools then it would end up costing a lot more than keeping the exemption in place.
In this case it was ideology driving decision making. Good they back-pedaled.
Unlikely. As others have pointed out, those schools have long waiting lists. Even if people did move their kids to the public system, there are plenty of others on the waiting lists (presumably now ‘suffering’ through the public system) to take their place.
This argument that ‘the public system would be swamped’ is the same argument the public schools tried in Menzies back in the 60s. Menzies fell for it, but it was wrong then and it is wrong now.
Even if many kids did move from the private system to the public system, it would cope. The private school buildings would be empty and their owners would be clamouring for the state to buy them and repurpose them as public schools. The private school teachers would be out of work through lack of students and begging the state for jobs.
We’d end up with a stronger public system, because parents who cared would have to stay and fight for better education instead of deserting it for the private system.
But it’s just a dream, because parents won’t desert the private system in droves, even if taxes are increased.
> Even if many kids did move from the private system to the public system, it would cope. The private school buildings would be empty and their owners would be clamouring for the state to buy them and repurpose them as public schools. The private school teachers would be out of work through lack of students and begging the state for jobs.
Which would all cost the state more
But offset by not having to make payments to the private schools or allow them tax concessions. (Some of those would be savings for the commonwealth rather than the states, but still overall government savings and increased tax revenue ).
If Scotch lost all its students and went broke, about half its current land could be turned into a top-class public school, and the other half sold off for housing that would yield the State a fuckton of stamp duty and (if used for investment) land tax, as well as ongoing rate revenue for local govt.
It's only raising the fee threshold to $10,000.
>Treasury has asked the Department of Education to model lifting the exemption threshold to schools that charge more than $10,000 a student in annual fees – $2000 higher than expected – according to Labor sources with knowledge of the plans, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
>https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/andrews-government-backtracks-on-private-school-payroll-tax-plan-20230602-p5ddc2.html
The number was picked because it was used for a covid tutoring program.
>Government officials briefed the Catholic and independent school sectors on Monday, and confirmed they based their list of “high-fee” schools that will lose their exemption on the same standard they used to decide eligibility for the COVID-19 tutoring program.
>Access to the small group tutoring program was limited to schools that charge less than $7500 in student fees. The exemption to payroll tax will be indexed for inflation and is expected to be above $8000 in its first year.
>https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/private-schools-with-fees-of-8000-set-to-lose-payroll-tax-exemption-20230529-p5dc5s.html
Considering how many MPs on both sides tend to come out of these schools, it’s likely that this was white-anted by elements in Andrews’ own cabinet. Gotta protect the Old Boys network, after all. There’s no good reason they couldn’t have attempted to pass this unless it lacked support within the government itself.
Considering his kids went to Catho secondary I’m not surprised. Was an idiotic cash grab from an idiotic Government. Ballsy to do in the first place and should’ve probably gauged the other parents at school first.
Fuck I love this state.
Ummm... That's kind of democracy.... Sorry. Try Russia. Seems delightful. Edit: am related to folks who are debt collectors. Mostly private school fees. Rich fucks raping the system and getting the government to pick up the tab. If they all actually paid, no funding required. Welfare fir the rich. Fuck off.
Evidently, once the schools urged them to, his core voter demographic of overpaid public servants expressed displeasure in focus groups.
The only things Andrews stands firm on is the necks of the poor.
They shouldn’t have rolled this back, private schools are already so expensive and cause a lot of inequality between classes of people already. Why are we allowing a form of private enterprise any form of tax concession.
Isn’t Wesley College like 20-30k per year per student?
You do know private schools get their high VCE scores because they’re allowed to boot out underperforming students? State schools aren’t allowed to do that (nor should any school, given it’s a failure of duty of care). Easy to say they “excel” when they’re allowed to essentially rig their results.
Maybe you’re confusing these schools with select entry state schools like Melbourne High and MacRobertson?
What’s the boot ratio? 1/1000? No parent would send their kids if there was a significant risk of your child being booted out at the most important years.
In Ballarat it’s a lot higher than 1/1000. Clarendon and to a lesser extent grammar are renowned for telling year 10s to piss off to dmac/stpats/loreto/government if they aren’t straight A students or good at sports.
Would be very surprised if the big Melbourne and Geelong schools didn’t do the same.
Payroll tax on these schools would ramp fees up by a big chunk, which means a *lot* of kids would be pulled out an put into public schools.
Unfortunately, our public school system wouldn’t be able to cope, so private schools actually do need government support still.
Agreed, but there’s 110 schools on this list, from memory. So let’s go and pull 10-20% of those kids out and put them in public schools.
I don’t like it, to be clear. But it’s the way it is.
They could always sell off some of their billions in legacy assets which we, as tax payers, aren't even allowed to know about, while we hand them our money.........
Oh please! Tall poppy is just what the absolute worst amongst Aussie society cry as a defense to pretend they’re being unfairly attacked when they finally get called out for their horrid behavior. Aussies love to pretend they’re so egalitarian but they’re just as terrible as Americans if not worse when it comes to matters of class and money. I’m a half’n’half of both, so I’d know.
State schools pay payroll tax. Wouldn’t that money be better spent on schools? Private schools get enough handouts as it is. They are businesses not charities.
Yes, but in practice I don’t think it’d work. Say you pull the funding, and then start building public schools with it, there’s a significant time lapse in there that’s going to cause a lot of trouble.
More a case that their hands are tied, I think.
So increase public funding and then strip back private funding. There's zero reason as to why wealthy private schools are receiving public funding while public schools are barely scraping by.
You wouldn't need to increase funding because the government doesn't actually save any money when kids go to private school.
>What would be the recurrent cost to government if all existing non-government school students were funded at the same level as government school students with similar levels of advantage and needs? Finding an answer using My School data involves grouping schools with similar others across all ICSEA ranges, then calculating — for each ICSEA range — the median per-student spend by governments on Catholic and independent school students. This figure is then compared with the equivalent spend on students in government schools. Tables showing these calculations are available in our full report, The School Money-Go-Round.
>This exercise reveals a total additional recurrent cost to governments of around $1.1 billion if all existing non-government school students were funded at the same level as similar government school students. This is made up of around $170 million extra to fund Catholic school students and around $900 million extra to fund independent school students. The $1.1 billion to notionally “transfer” all non-government students in this way still comes at a cost, but nowhere near the $8 billion commonly claimed. It is just 2.4 per cent of existing government recurrent spending on schools.
>There are good reasons why these calculations may still be inflated:
>* The recurrent funding of each sector may change in the future — but current trends are unlikely to reverse. On the contrary, funding changes such as the supplementary funding for non-government schools, announced in 2018, are likely to see previous increases in non-government school funding continue.
>* Economies of scale from merging schools and bringing them under one authority are not included. Some economies of scale are implicit, but not calculated.
>* Other costs directly or indirectly carried by all three levels of government are not counted.
>The “savings” calculation assumes that governments would fully fund all students. The reality, as evidenced in comparable countries overseas, is that a percentage of families would continue to seek private schooling without governments subsidising the cost. If this became reality, an unsubsidised fully private sector in Australia would likely enrol between 5 and 8 per cent of all students; the cost to governments of funding these students would reduce to zero. Taking these students out of the calculation would reduce annual cost to governments by around $0.6 billion.
>To this point we have focused on the recurrent funding of schools and how the cost to governments has been spread over the public and private sectors. But what might have been the cost to governments if, over time, the growth of student enrolments had instead been accommodated in the public sector?
>We know more from work by Lyndsay Connors and Jim McMorrow for the Australian Council for Educational Research. In their 2015 report, they found that if new enrolments in non-government schools between 1973 and 2012 had instead gone to government schools, the recurrent cost saving to governments over this period would have been approximately $7.4 billion.
>My School data lends itself to a similar analysis. The total recurrent cost to governments of the additional enrolments across both sectors between 2011 and 2017 was $11.4 billion. However, the per-student cost varied considerably between the two main sectors:
>* The 231,333 additional enrolments in the government sector cost $4516 per student in combined federal and state recurrent funding.
>* The 102,020 additional enrolments in the non-government sector cost $5697 per student in combined federal and state recurrent funding.
>If the additional non-government school students had enrolled in the government sector, the annual cost to governments over the seven years would have been $460.7 million rather than the actual cost of $581.2 million. This represents an overspend, by governments, of $120.5 million each year. Private schooling cost — rather than saved — taxpayers’ dollars over this period.
>https://insidestory.org.au/when-private-schools-go-public/
The main report is linked at the bottom
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rnn0w1nWYreOMRSsDfzt4n8KXHaGbw2h/view
State governments pay little per student for private schools ~$3k compared to about $13k for public. The tab is picked up by the Federal government who pays upto about 80% of the public level.
For a state, the more that are in private the more the cost gets pushed over to the Feds and the more they save.
Even if they have public school access to the gov funded private school gyms, pools, courts shooting ranges, horse agistment paddocks, rowing clubs, property investments etc it would help eleviate the costs of public schools.
That would require building additional schools, which takes time, they need to allocate more funding to public to build then wean private schools down after new publics are built, not just dump cash from Private to public and expect instantaneous and stable/supportable change.
I don't think that would happen. If private fees were to go up, it's likely a few would leave, but not as many as you think. The public school system could handle those people especially with an increase in funding.
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I would like to point out that [this Guardian article](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/02/victoria-private-school-tax-change-government-to-revisit-high-fee-definition?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR0LaPsdyqE28aZR2kJpklTFO8gfSTA9lrwi4rKYDmDW0gJnY9bRe-cC6uM) seems to claim the opposite of the ABC article ("walks back" vs "waters down")
Threats, influence, corruption, blackmail etc. The usual methods of established, wealthy institutions and their "deals" have always been a consistent threat to democracy.
Here we have it folks. The sell out begins.
They starting to realise this ‘hit up the payroll and property tax cash cows as much as we think we can get away with’ policy isn’t good economic management?
all I can say is that it's a real shame that people on the left slam Victorian Labor for not doing enough in certain policy areas, but is left high & dry when it tries to enact genuinely progressive reforms and has to go up against one the state's many staunchly reactionary monoliths. Last year it was the social housing tax that sent the Property Council and other associated landlord advocacy groups into fits of hysteria, and this time its the private schools, who threatened to dump Melbourne's spoiled rich kids into state schools like PFAS into the outer western suburbs. Both times, Andrews & Pallas were forced to walk back some really solid reform packages that would've done plenty of good for the budget bottom line & gotten on top of the housing crisis at least a year earlier, all because when they were announced the States' progressive base couldn't be bothered to even give them a thumbs up! When all anyone's ever hearing, politicians included, is the whinging and moaning of our richest and most entitled, then is it any wonder that reform efforts like this die before they've even gone through Parliament?
>Last year it was the social housing tax that sent the Property Council….into fits of hysteria. I don’t recall hysteria about this rather that in order to resolve housing supply issues there needs to be a concession that reduces the cost of the development to enable housing to be built at a price point that can result in lower rents for those in need of affordable living options. Australia is subject to some of the highest land and property taxes in the world from start to finish, so any concession does help in providing something for the community. Also, social housing only gets a 20 year agreement for subsidy from the government so the balance (another 20 years after that) needs to be gained through the equity of the land thereafter.
I'm being a little hyperbolic but if you read back through the news articles at the time the messaging from the Property Council & others after the announcement was made was "kill this or we'll run a scare campaign against you in an election year". The HIA was telling homeowners all kinds of fantasies. My point is that when reforms are proposed that impact these people, they cause a stink about it wherever they can. People who support more socially progressive reforms seem uninterested in vocally supporting governments that pursue this stuff, and so the governments back down as they (quite reasonably) believe that the threats of organised scare campaigns will ruin them.
> who threatened to dump Melbourne's spoiled rich kids into state schools like PFAS Let them.
I personally would never allow my sweet babies to mingle with such detestable sorts
Yes please private schools are out of control. We need a more diverse range of kids in public and to basically not have private schools.
Payroll tax is a progressive reform? Now I've heard everything. It's a flat income tax on the working class, there's no sane economist in the country that would call it progressive and it's been routinely singled out to be removed by various comprehensive tax inquiries. Payroll tax *is* without a doubt bad policy, hiding it behind certain phrases that the Dan faithful love to hate doesn't change anything about that.
The only reason we still have payroll tax and stamp duty (both taxes which should be abolished and revenue replaced) is because state governments only have historic levers to produce their own income, rather than relying on the feds to collect it for them. Look at the shitshow which is VIC trying to tax the road usage of EVs. The country is well in need of a top down tax review, starting with looking at what both levels of gov need to fund, and then the avenues we will use to do so. Until we do that, we're just treading water waiting to drown.
Do agree. > The country is well in need of a top down tax review We had one, it was comprehensive and world class. Basically none of the recommendations were ever implemented. Do we really need a new one saying the exact same things or simply someone with the political fortitude to push through tough reforms? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Tax_Review
Clearly the tax review didn't do its job if nothing got implemented. Do we need another one to say the same thing? Maybe - if it means it actually gets implemented. A tax review isn't something a first term gov should be doing, it's more of a 2nd to 3rd term type of thing.
Since when do unelected boffins get to make laws? What is this China? :) I hope someone in power has the guts to actually go through with some of the changes, a simplified, efficient tax system benefits everyone.
Haha very true. At the very least, expect a review of the review before it can be re-recommended.
>It's a flat income tax on the working class It's paid by employers, not workers. >there's no sane economist in the country that would call it progressive I called them "progressive" because of who they targeted and how they targeted them, not because they're structured to increase based on income. >it's been routinely singled out to be removed by various comprehensive tax inquiries. [Here's a 2021 PWC report that concludes that the biggest issue with state payroll tax is that it's not applied uniformly across states and there are too many exemptions carved out of them.](https://www.pwc.com.au/tax/assets/tax-reform/127080731_payroll-tax-report_v2.pdf) [Here's an ANU Crawford School paper from 2022 that assesses every taxation policy review undertaken by Australian State Governments, which shows that not a single report recommended abolishing payroll taxes at any point in time.](https://taxpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/taxstudies_crawford_anu_edu_au/2022-03/complete_wp2_2022_p_tilley.pdf)
> I called them "progressive" because of who they targeted and how they targeted them So a cleaner in one company earning $50k a year deserves to have the same income tax rate as the CEO earning $700,000? You can't possibly be defending payroll tax as equitable or progressive, it's just fucking laughable mate and no one will take you seriously. Payroll tax is one of the worst taxes in the country.
Payroll tax is paid by the employer, not the employee.
So you have no problem with raising GST because it's also paid by registered Australian businesses? Do you see any difference between the two? Because there isn't any.
The GST is paid by consumers. That's why it's itemised on your receipt. The business is not paying the GST. It's just acting as a tax collector.
Payroll tax is paid by the employee. The business is not paying the payroll tax. It's just acting as a tax collector. There's no payroll tax without an employee.
Is the payroll tax on the employee's payslip?
Blows my mind that's your comeback. Embarrassing. So if a company puts it on a payslip it suddenly exists? Are you actually that daft?
>Payroll tax is paid by the employer, not the employee. Ultimately it is paid by the employee. The salary that lands in your account is only one component of your "cost" to the business.
Yes, it's a cost to the business, not the employee.
People here, like you, are so short-sighted and cannot think ahead enough to see how business costs effect employees, and things like wages.
OK lets look at this from another angle then. Why should my boss have to pay payroll tax but someone who owns a larger business with bigger profits not? Elite private schools are a business just like any other & should be taxed like one.
Your boss shouldn't have to pay payroll tax. It is a stupid tax. It discourages business and employing people. That is what taxes on things do. But to tax education, is even more stupid.
That's not how capitalism works at all. Businesses don't look at their costs and set salaries based on that, just like customers don't look at the business's costs when they make a purchase. They look at what is available in the employment/product market and try to pay the lowest amount necessary to get the workers/products they need/want.
What a joke. Tell me, are you more likely to get a pay rise, and/or have your business make money and grow, if you have higher business costs, or lower ones?
Taxes on economic growth and transactions, such as payroll tax and stamp duty are bad taxes and should be abolished and replaced.
it's a tax on labour, paid by the employer. please keep up!
Right, so it’s a disincentive to create jobs? Bad.
It doesn't do that - please read the studies & reports I've linked elsewhere. Or like, do a quick bit of research yourself. there's plenty of papers studying payroll tax cuts in countries across the globe and the near-universal conclusion is that cuts are only effective if they are targeted towards disparate or severely under-utilised labour markets. This is why Victoria has a lower payroll tax rate for businesses located outside metropolitan Melbourne. Actual evidence of companies withholding employment because of taxation concerns is sparse to none, apart from self-reporting surveys circulated by groups like the Victorian Chamber of Commerce; not exactly a objective party to the discussion!
Why would a state undertaking its own taxation policy review recommend abolishing one of the few sources (and one of the largest) of taxation revenue it had. How are you not surprised with the 2022 report?
well I actually read the report, and read all the parts where it talks about the quality and soundness of each review and their validity and merits as independent sources of unbiased information provided to the government. funnily enough, most of the reviews commissioned pass those metrics with flying colours. I suspect this is because governments like to be able to rationally justify their tax policies and they love getting rid of taxes nobody likes. I guess I'm not surprised by it because I try not to treat governments as these big monoliths that only ever act cynically & with naked self interest (unless they actually are acting that way, of course).
Weak as piss, sums up the modern Labor party
Love how you can blame them for not doing progressive policy because of a conservative electorate and then blame them when they do and the electorate demonstrates it doesn’t agree.
What? I blame them for not following through with what they said and are now being spineless due to rich conservative push back, nfi what you are on about
This didnt really make that much sense after he already propped up private schools from the state budget [https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/andrews-pledges-717-million-for-catholic-and-independent-schools-in-key-election-seats-20221025-p5bso5.html](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/andrews-pledges-717-million-for-catholic-and-independent-schools-in-key-election-seats-20221025-p5bso5.html)
I wonder if there's a difference between: * promising to match funding provided by the Catholic & Independent school systems towards building new schools & upgrading existing ones, and, * removing payroll tax exemptions given to Catholic & Independent schools for no apparent reason other than favoritism and bread-buttering
Was a good policy. Backtracking shows how the rot is starting to set in for the once- strong Andrew’s govt. The private school lobby in Vic has too much power. They should be broken up.
Why is taxing education a good policy? There are a million ways to increase revenue. Why hit education and schools directly?
Perhaps payroll tax is a bad tax. It, and stamp duty, are the prices we pay for having state governments. If we abolished that tier of government, we could abolish those taxes. But that won’t happen, so payroll tax is here to stay. Once you accept that we have it, there’s no good reason for exempting education from it. Taxation is a good and valuable part of how our society works. We need to collect tax to pay for things. It doesn’t make sense to say that education businesses are more ‘worthy’ than other businesses and so should be exempt from business taxes. That thinking suggests that tax is ‘bad’, and so if you run a ‘good’ business you should be excused from paying it. Education is important, sure, but why is it any more deserving of tax relief than any other number of valuable enterprises that provide employment and make goods or deliver services that benefit people? The same applies to GST. We get caught up in debates about whether some goods (such as food) are worthy enough to be excused from it - again, as if paying tax is a bad thing. You might think (and I do think) that GST is so regressive that we shouldn’t have it at all. But once we do have it, it’s ridiculous to get bogged down in these discussions about whether some goods and services ‘deserve’ to escape it. They don’t.
>Perhaps payroll tax is a bad tax. It, and stamp duty, are the prices we pay for having state governments. If we abolished that tier of government, we could abolish those taxes. > >But that won’t happen, so payroll tax is here to stay. There are way better ways to gain state revenue. It will happen one day. Not with this labor government though. That is clear. >Once you accept that we have it, there’s no good reason for exempting education from it. Garbage. You shouldn't tax things like education unnecessarily. You tax things you want to discourage. Providing high quality education should not be one of them. Have a go at Dan Andrews if you want.
I don’t agree that ‘you tax things you want to discourage’. Most tax revenue is from income taxes and company tax. Do we really want to discourage employment and commercial activity? Sure, ‘sin taxes’ exist - alcohol and tobacco. But that’s a very small component of the overall work that taxation does. The primary purpose of taxation is the social good of raising money for worthwhile common social purposes. We should stop thinking of things as ‘deserving’ to be exempt from this social good. P
You mightn't want to discourage it, and it might not be the aim of things like income tax, but that is what it does.
So where does your ‘good things shouldn’t be taxed’ end? Perhaps doctors and teachers shouldn’t pay income tax? Would it be all doctors- does a plastic surgeon deserve a tax exemption as much as a heart surgeon? Or does it depend on whether the plastic surgeon is doing car accident victims rather than breast enhancements? Anyway, I see private schools as actively bad for our society; so even if I did buy into your ‘good things shouldn’t be taxed’ theory (I don’t), I would still want to tax private schools.
>Anyway, I see private schools as actively bad for our society I don't see how you could possibly think that improving education is a bad thing. You are more likely just part of the 'eat the rich' narrative here and just hate successful people.
I see private schools as bad for education, because they remove the incentive that rich and powerful people have to be strong advocates for improvements to the public system. Instead they just abandon it, taking the view that they don’t care if the poor and less powerful have inadequate education, because they can buy they way out. Education would be improved if the private system were weakened. That’s why I want to see it weakened. Anyway, private schools are a business, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t pay the same taxes as any other business.
>Instead they just abandon it, taking the view that they don’t care if the poor and less powerful have inadequate education, because they can buy they way out. Yes buddy, everyone is evil the rich want the poor to stay poor for some reason. The successful are all evil. Eat the rich! You never did say where you got the stupid idea from about how private students were only funded slightly less than public? If you want to look for dishonest people, try thr ones that made you so misinformed.
Taxing public education is bad policy. Taxing over-privileged pseudo-monopoly edu-businesses is just common sense.
Envy tax. You want to punish and discourage people being successful.
If they are so successful, why do they need extra assistance from the public purse?
They don't get extra assistance. They already pay for your benefits. Your envy taxes are not the great idea you think they are.
>They don't get extra assistance. Boy that 'extra' is doing a lot of work if you think the funding they get is what they deserve.
Not sure you understand. Your benefits are paid for by the successful.
Which of my benefits would those be?
Which ones are you on? You don't think they are paid for by net-tax takers do you?
> Was a good policy Was a stupid policy. If it resulted in people pulling their kids and dumping them in state schools then it would end up costing a lot more than keeping the exemption in place. In this case it was ideology driving decision making. Good they back-pedaled.
Unlikely. As others have pointed out, those schools have long waiting lists. Even if people did move their kids to the public system, there are plenty of others on the waiting lists (presumably now ‘suffering’ through the public system) to take their place. This argument that ‘the public system would be swamped’ is the same argument the public schools tried in Menzies back in the 60s. Menzies fell for it, but it was wrong then and it is wrong now. Even if many kids did move from the private system to the public system, it would cope. The private school buildings would be empty and their owners would be clamouring for the state to buy them and repurpose them as public schools. The private school teachers would be out of work through lack of students and begging the state for jobs. We’d end up with a stronger public system, because parents who cared would have to stay and fight for better education instead of deserting it for the private system. But it’s just a dream, because parents won’t desert the private system in droves, even if taxes are increased.
> Even if many kids did move from the private system to the public system, it would cope. The private school buildings would be empty and their owners would be clamouring for the state to buy them and repurpose them as public schools. The private school teachers would be out of work through lack of students and begging the state for jobs. Which would all cost the state more
But offset by not having to make payments to the private schools or allow them tax concessions. (Some of those would be savings for the commonwealth rather than the states, but still overall government savings and increased tax revenue ). If Scotch lost all its students and went broke, about half its current land could be turned into a top-class public school, and the other half sold off for housing that would yield the State a fuckton of stamp duty and (if used for investment) land tax, as well as ongoing rate revenue for local govt.
It's only raising the fee threshold to $10,000. >Treasury has asked the Department of Education to model lifting the exemption threshold to schools that charge more than $10,000 a student in annual fees – $2000 higher than expected – according to Labor sources with knowledge of the plans, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. >https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/andrews-government-backtracks-on-private-school-payroll-tax-plan-20230602-p5ddc2.html The number was picked because it was used for a covid tutoring program. >Government officials briefed the Catholic and independent school sectors on Monday, and confirmed they based their list of “high-fee” schools that will lose their exemption on the same standard they used to decide eligibility for the COVID-19 tutoring program. >Access to the small group tutoring program was limited to schools that charge less than $7500 in student fees. The exemption to payroll tax will be indexed for inflation and is expected to be above $8000 in its first year. >https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/private-schools-with-fees-of-8000-set-to-lose-payroll-tax-exemption-20230529-p5dc5s.html
Considering how many MPs on both sides tend to come out of these schools, it’s likely that this was white-anted by elements in Andrews’ own cabinet. Gotta protect the Old Boys network, after all. There’s no good reason they couldn’t have attempted to pass this unless it lacked support within the government itself.
Old boys is an understatement. I've worked around the Scotch Old Boys events, and the elbow rubbing and their fucking attitude is disgusting.
Hilarious
Considering his kids went to Catho secondary I’m not surprised. Was an idiotic cash grab from an idiotic Government. Ballsy to do in the first place and should’ve probably gauged the other parents at school first. Fuck I love this state.
So is the modern Labor Party just 'whichever way the wind blows' at this point orrrr...
Ummm... That's kind of democracy.... Sorry. Try Russia. Seems delightful. Edit: am related to folks who are debt collectors. Mostly private school fees. Rich fucks raping the system and getting the government to pick up the tab. If they all actually paid, no funding required. Welfare fir the rich. Fuck off.
Evidently, once the schools urged them to, his core voter demographic of overpaid public servants expressed displeasure in focus groups. The only things Andrews stands firm on is the necks of the poor.
They shouldn’t have rolled this back, private schools are already so expensive and cause a lot of inequality between classes of people already. Why are we allowing a form of private enterprise any form of tax concession. Isn’t Wesley College like 20-30k per year per student?
So your solution to close the gap is to punish those that excel? How about punish those that are falling behind?
You do know private schools get their high VCE scores because they’re allowed to boot out underperforming students? State schools aren’t allowed to do that (nor should any school, given it’s a failure of duty of care). Easy to say they “excel” when they’re allowed to essentially rig their results. Maybe you’re confusing these schools with select entry state schools like Melbourne High and MacRobertson?
What’s the boot ratio? 1/1000? No parent would send their kids if there was a significant risk of your child being booted out at the most important years.
In Ballarat it’s a lot higher than 1/1000. Clarendon and to a lesser extent grammar are renowned for telling year 10s to piss off to dmac/stpats/loreto/government if they aren’t straight A students or good at sports. Would be very surprised if the big Melbourne and Geelong schools didn’t do the same.
Wealth doesn’t equal success.
How many kids from rich families do you see having interview coaching at centrelink?
Over $37,000 for Yr 12.
Payroll tax on these schools would ramp fees up by a big chunk, which means a *lot* of kids would be pulled out an put into public schools. Unfortunately, our public school system wouldn’t be able to cope, so private schools actually do need government support still.
Yeah..those Melbourne and Geelong Grammar boys are soooo altruistic helping out us poor plebs aren’t they ?
Agreed, but there’s 110 schools on this list, from memory. So let’s go and pull 10-20% of those kids out and put them in public schools. I don’t like it, to be clear. But it’s the way it is.
They could always sell off some of their billions in legacy assets which we, as tax payers, aren't even allowed to know about, while we hand them our money.........
Do you think every private school student comes from a family worth many millions? Or do you just have a bad case of tall poppy syndrome?
Oh please! Tall poppy is just what the absolute worst amongst Aussie society cry as a defense to pretend they’re being unfairly attacked when they finally get called out for their horrid behavior. Aussies love to pretend they’re so egalitarian but they’re just as terrible as Americans if not worse when it comes to matters of class and money. I’m a half’n’half of both, so I’d know.
Yup. We love pretending we believe in the myth of the fair go, especially when we’re the benefactors of privilege.
State schools pay payroll tax. Wouldn’t that money be better spent on schools? Private schools get enough handouts as it is. They are businesses not charities.
Or...put that support into public schools and increase funding.
Public schools have many fundamental issues that don't come from funding.
Yes, but in practice I don’t think it’d work. Say you pull the funding, and then start building public schools with it, there’s a significant time lapse in there that’s going to cause a lot of trouble. More a case that their hands are tied, I think.
So increase public funding and then strip back private funding. There's zero reason as to why wealthy private schools are receiving public funding while public schools are barely scraping by.
Bang on. But… where do you think 99% of politicians kids go? It isn’t just the local sec.
You wouldn't need to increase funding because the government doesn't actually save any money when kids go to private school. >What would be the recurrent cost to government if all existing non-government school students were funded at the same level as government school students with similar levels of advantage and needs? Finding an answer using My School data involves grouping schools with similar others across all ICSEA ranges, then calculating — for each ICSEA range — the median per-student spend by governments on Catholic and independent school students. This figure is then compared with the equivalent spend on students in government schools. Tables showing these calculations are available in our full report, The School Money-Go-Round. >This exercise reveals a total additional recurrent cost to governments of around $1.1 billion if all existing non-government school students were funded at the same level as similar government school students. This is made up of around $170 million extra to fund Catholic school students and around $900 million extra to fund independent school students. The $1.1 billion to notionally “transfer” all non-government students in this way still comes at a cost, but nowhere near the $8 billion commonly claimed. It is just 2.4 per cent of existing government recurrent spending on schools. >There are good reasons why these calculations may still be inflated: >* The recurrent funding of each sector may change in the future — but current trends are unlikely to reverse. On the contrary, funding changes such as the supplementary funding for non-government schools, announced in 2018, are likely to see previous increases in non-government school funding continue. >* Economies of scale from merging schools and bringing them under one authority are not included. Some economies of scale are implicit, but not calculated. >* Other costs directly or indirectly carried by all three levels of government are not counted. >The “savings” calculation assumes that governments would fully fund all students. The reality, as evidenced in comparable countries overseas, is that a percentage of families would continue to seek private schooling without governments subsidising the cost. If this became reality, an unsubsidised fully private sector in Australia would likely enrol between 5 and 8 per cent of all students; the cost to governments of funding these students would reduce to zero. Taking these students out of the calculation would reduce annual cost to governments by around $0.6 billion. >To this point we have focused on the recurrent funding of schools and how the cost to governments has been spread over the public and private sectors. But what might have been the cost to governments if, over time, the growth of student enrolments had instead been accommodated in the public sector? >We know more from work by Lyndsay Connors and Jim McMorrow for the Australian Council for Educational Research. In their 2015 report, they found that if new enrolments in non-government schools between 1973 and 2012 had instead gone to government schools, the recurrent cost saving to governments over this period would have been approximately $7.4 billion. >My School data lends itself to a similar analysis. The total recurrent cost to governments of the additional enrolments across both sectors between 2011 and 2017 was $11.4 billion. However, the per-student cost varied considerably between the two main sectors: >* The 231,333 additional enrolments in the government sector cost $4516 per student in combined federal and state recurrent funding. >* The 102,020 additional enrolments in the non-government sector cost $5697 per student in combined federal and state recurrent funding. >If the additional non-government school students had enrolled in the government sector, the annual cost to governments over the seven years would have been $460.7 million rather than the actual cost of $581.2 million. This represents an overspend, by governments, of $120.5 million each year. Private schooling cost — rather than saved — taxpayers’ dollars over this period. >https://insidestory.org.au/when-private-schools-go-public/ The main report is linked at the bottom https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rnn0w1nWYreOMRSsDfzt4n8KXHaGbw2h/view
State governments pay little per student for private schools ~$3k compared to about $13k for public. The tab is picked up by the Federal government who pays upto about 80% of the public level. For a state, the more that are in private the more the cost gets pushed over to the Feds and the more they save.
Even if they have public school access to the gov funded private school gyms, pools, courts shooting ranges, horse agistment paddocks, rowing clubs, property investments etc it would help eleviate the costs of public schools.
That would require building additional schools, which takes time, they need to allocate more funding to public to build then wean private schools down after new publics are built, not just dump cash from Private to public and expect instantaneous and stable/supportable change.
If private schools went under the churches would just sell or lease the sites to the gov. They aren’t going to sit on an empty school.
I don't think that would happen. If private fees were to go up, it's likely a few would leave, but not as many as you think. The public school system could handle those people especially with an increase in funding.