As soon as the going gets tough in countries around the world, tensions are ignited as people struggle to understand why they are seemingly being singled out to suffer. At the moment many nations in the world are on the brink of recession, and it’s at times like these that people begin to look around for someone to blame.
Looking from the outside in at the decline in economic fortunes that the UK is currently enduring for example, one can see that it is the state of the nation that’s all wrong rather than the actions or lives of individuals. However, it is always the lives of the individuals that suffer, therefore it is not surprising that as individuals we all begin to feel uncomfortable when our jobs and our homes are on the line and our way of life is threatened.
Unfortunately we look for someone to blame – we begin with the government but then we may look more closely at immigrants for example, to determine whether they are ‘taking our jobs,’ and we may get angrier with those who are still seemingly doing well. It’s an ugly fact of the human condition. But in Australia the Australian government is actually taking this ‘condition’ a stage further and they themselves are singling out the wealthy for ‘special’ treatment as their nation struggles financially speaking – in other words, Australia’s getting tough on tax…
Whilst the Australian government may well be looking at the underlying factors that have caused their nation to be struggling fiscally speaking, they are apparently more vehemently making a statement against those in their society who are still wealthy despite the fact that Australia is on the brink of falling into a recession. Instead of setting an example for its citizens to follow, the government appears to be the worst for deflecting any form of responsibility from its own shoulders. They have instead decided to crack down and examine the tax affairs of the super wealthy in minutiae, and they are also thinking about advancing the upper rate of tax charged on income.
In an unusual move the Australian government has personally contacted just over a thousand of its most wealthy citizens to inform them that it is about to begin watching them even more closely! According to a statement from the Commissioner for Taxation, Michael D’Ascenzio: “over the next few years we will almost triple the number of officers dedicated to monitoring wealthy people.” One has to wonder whether that is a) making good use of public money and b) worthwhile because if they put too much pressure and exert too much control on these wealthy and powerful people, they can just up and leave and take all their taxable income and assets with them!
In another surprising move the government is apparently actively thinking about extending the upper tax rate charged to 50% on all income over a million Australian dollars. A report by the Australia Institute into the case for introducing this upper rate band is scarily Marxist in its conclusions. So whilst the UK’s Immigration Minister Phil Woolas was nearly hung drawn and quartered when he suggested placing a curb on immigrant numbers to prevent the rising numbers of unemployed in the UK potentially turning on migrants for ‘taking their jobs,’ no one seems to have noticed that the Australian government is turning to communism in its approach to taxation!!
