The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor’s two-party lead at 54-46, up from 53-47 last time. Primary vote numbers will be with us later. Also featured are Essential’s monthly (I think) leadership ratings, and they find Malcolm Turnbull little changed at 41% approval (up two) and 41% disapproval (on one), but Bill Shorten improving to 37% approval (up four) and 44% disapproval (down two). Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is 41-26, compared with 42-25 last time.
Other questions relate to Adani, on which 30% favour the Greens’ position, 26% favour the Coalition’s and 19% favour Labor’s, though it would be important to see the question wording on that one. Other findings related by The Guardian are that 42% support and 39% oppose company tax cuts; that regulating energy prices had 83% support, an “Accord-style partnership” 66% support and boosting Newstart 52% support; and that same-sex marriage is supported by 65% and opposed by 26%. Essential Research’s full report should be with us later in the day.
UPDATE: Full report here. Primary vote gains for the major parties at the expense of other/independent, with the Coalition up one to 36% and Labor up three to 38%, with the Greens down one to 9% and One Nation steady on 8%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1025.
dtt,
you sound unhinged again. You just can’t give up your Putin love, can you? Yaaawn.
Sitting in a $255000
In Sydney, that would buy you a cardboard box in the middle of the road.
Boerwar says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 12:18 pm
dtt
Sorry. You are no longer invited into my bunker.
_________________
Wise decision.
bemused
We were friends on facebook. You used to harass me there about posters such as Frank and mysay. I unfriended you. Then I friended you again. Then I unfriended you.
I know your memory isn’t as good as it once was, so I quite understand your forgetting this.
(And yes, posters who didn’t tell you why they quit PB told me why they quit PB. Obviously, if they were sick of your abuse, they weren’t going to tell you).
MT says NBN all stuffed up and is Bill Shortens fault.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/malcolm-turnbull-says-the-nbn-was-a-mistake-2017-10
Boerwar says:
Archie made other arrangements ?
MT says NBN all stuffed up and is Bill Shortens fault.
____
Yes. Fibre to the node is all at Shorten’s feet.
daretotread. @ #1649 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 8:05 am
Thank you and zoomster for the unsolicited character reference.
Eleanor Roosevelt was certainly right and you and certain others prove it yet again.
jiehyunglo: Did you know @SCMP_News was co-founded by Chinese-Australian revolutionary Tse Tsan-tai? This is just one of many Chinese-Australian success stories. Shared history and legacies can make our bilateral relationship stronger and more sincere. #auspol #auschina #foreignpolicy
jiehyunglo: With the Director of CIA being nominated to serve as US Secretary of State, we should have a serious conversation as part of our debate on foreign interference about the potential threats of American influence and espionage to Australian institutions and society. #auspol
There are bipartisan calls in the British parliament for Theresa May to go much further in sanctions and other measures against Russia. They have called for a ban on RT (Russian State propaganda TV) in Britain, legislating the ‘Magnitsky Act’ in Britain and freezing the British assets of Russian oligarchs regards laundered money that has flowed into British banks and property.
Steve777 says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:02 pm
Sitting in a $255000
In Sydney, that would buy you a cardboard box in the middle of the road.
_______________________
Rozelle is Sydney.
The apartment is only two bedrooms.
Jackol @ #1862 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 8:08 am
No it isn’t. With a tax refund of PAYE the Tax Office is giving you back your money. Franking credit refunds are the Tax Office giving you other taxpayer’s money.
And no, the tax paid by the company is not the shareholder’s money. It is money from the profits that company made. The capital (ie amount paid for the shares) is the shareholder’s money, the tax paid on profits is not.
don says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 8:28 am
…”Those sfr have been paying taxes all their lives (at least I have!) in order that those less fortunate”…
.
I have a relative who spouts the same “paid taxes all my life” rubbish.
She also buys a new Range Rover every second year, drips with gold and diamonds, lives alone in the sort of 5 bedroom house most people could only dream of, and complains vehemently because she no longer qualifies for a pension card and has to pay $7 for a damn Ventolin inhaler instead of three.
There is no way in hell the taxes of anyone currently working should be subsidising her lifestyle or anyone else in her position, and yet she is almost certainly receives an offset payment each year for tax she never actually paid.
I don’t pay taxes so that when I am to old to work I might suck the future away from my children, I pay them so that those who need support now get it, and so that if I require a pension one day I will have earned the right to expect one.
Because of superannuation, NOT income taxes, I, like most people my age probably won’t need one.
The single person aged pension is under $23,000 per year, if your super stream exceeds this, you can get stuffed.
DG –
Again, the point of Dividend Imputation is to treat dividend income as personal income and ‘correct’ for any company tax paid.
I will quote the wikipedia page again – if this is incorrect, explain why, otherwise…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_imputation#Operation
Any refund is therefore a refund of excess tax paid once everything else is taken into consideration on an individual’s tax return … that was the comparison I was drawing, and I maintain it is a valid comparison to make.
Absence of Empathy
An excellent way of putting it. A gold koala stamp for you !
“Sitting in a $255000…”
think there is a zero missing.
A of E
I too have no truck with the “paid taxes all my life” mob.
A former colleague who has had his age pension snipped a bit because of the most recent assets test change likes to trot this out, conveniently ignoring that for a fair bit of his working life he was paying taxes in other countries!
Absence of Empathy says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:11 pm
don says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 8:28 am
…”Those sfr have been paying taxes all their lives (at least I have!) in order that those less fortunate”…
.
I have a relative who spouts the same “paid taxes all my life” rubbish.
She also buys a new Range Rover every second year, drips with gold and diamonds, lives alone in the sort of 5 bedroom house most people could only dream of, and complains vehemently because she no longer qualifies for a pension card and has to pay $7 for a damn Ventolin inhaler instead of three.
There is no way in hell the taxes of anyone currently working should be subsidising her lifestyle or anyone else in her position, and yet she is almost certainly receives an offset payment each year for tax she never actually paid.
I don’t pay taxes so that when I am to old to work I might suck the future away from my children, I pay them so that those who need support now get it, and so that if I require a pension one day I will have earned the right to expect one.
Because of superannuation, NOT income taxes, I, like most people my age probably won’t need one.
The single person aged pension is under $23,000 per year, if your super stream exceeds this, you can get stuffed.
________________________________________________
The couple combined is $35 058.40 with all the lurks and perks, and our super and total income is well above that.
We are both still working, at age over 70, and loving it.
So consider me stuffed, if you will.
Doesn’t matter to me if you didn’t pump as much money as you could into super instead of wasting it. Your choice.
Take what you want and pay for it.
___________
Dan
That’s a bit glib.
I did not say that a drop in share values would directly lead to a loss in tax revenue.
But dividends are not set in stone. If profitabilityof a company goes south, dividends are in peril.
For those who have invested in Australian shares for the franked dividends, and if in SMSF and part of the attraction is taken away, they will take their money overseas, or put in fixed interest here. This would put downward pressure on share prices and indirectly, future dividends.
It seems this tax has been paid by these shareholders.
So I doubt that Labor can say that this measure is guaranteed to “save” $X pa holds up.
Rozelle median 2 bedroom apartment $1,400,000 according to realestate.com
Having recently acquired “dumb country folk” status, this is how I see the tax situation:
(a) The primary aim of company tax is to tax the profits of corporations.
(b) If a corporation makes a profit it cannot otherwise hide, write off, balance against losses, transfer from one accounts column to another, expatriate to the Caymans via Ireland, the Netherlands, Jersey, Lichtenstein or the state of Wisconsin, or otherwise avoid, then it pays tax.
(c) If the firm can afford to pay a dividend, but the payee has a tax liability from earnings, then the payee can use the tax already paid by the company in which he or she owns shares as an offset to reduce the amount of tax they would normally pay.
(d) If the shareholder hasn’t earned anything taxable, they still get to keep the dividend paid to them tax free, and of course they don’t pay any other tax either.
*** At this stage both tax entities – the company and its shareholder – have paid their fair share of tax. The government has managed to collect a little bit out of the situation, so they can run the country, just like both tax paying entities rightfully would expect them to do. ***
So why in hell would the government want to give away ALL the pittance of tax they managed to claw out this cosy arrangement?
The shareholder enjoys the benefits of limited liability, because the shareholder is not legally “the company”. If the company makes a loss one year, the shareholder doesn’t have to fork out their hard (un)earned cash to top up the company coffers, do they? What if the shareholder is the sole shareholder and doesn’t do any work at all? Does the company EVER have to pay any tax if the owner/shareholder gets it all back through the back door?
But when it comes to paying tax, suddenly the shareholders want themselves and the company to be effectively seen as one single entity, despite enjoying the benefits of otherwise being treated as separate entities.
As someone posted yesterday, our system is rife with taxed earnings being further taxed when they are transferred to a new tax entity. Every time you spend an after-tax dollar on a shop, it’s taxed again (if the shop earns a profit). No-one dares to ask for a rebate when they save up for and buy a new TV out of their salary, or a Mars Bar for that matter.
Dividends are paid if the company’s balance sheet allows it, after company tax paid is fully considered in the decision to pay the dividend in the first place.
Something like this is what I’ll be telling the old girlfriend. Or maybe I’ll just tell her that even princesses have to suck it up occasionally.
This is the saddest part of this story:
“What really affected me the most is seeing those young children getting real-life lessons in hate, that was the thing that made me really, really upset with those people. Those innocent 5-, 6-year-old children are now really learning hate from their parents. It’s really disheartening,” Al-Akoum, the operations director and acting imam of the center, told HuffPost.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-videos-mosque-vandalism-women-children_us_5aa9a121e4b0600b82ffe195
The philosophy seems to be teach them young and often, then they will hate forever.
poroti says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:25 pm
Rozelle median 2 bedroom apartment $1,400,000 according to realestate.com
___________________
Thanks, I thought that estimate by another poster was a bit on the low side.
“Rozelle is Sydney.
The apartment is only two bedrooms.”
Rozelle is in Sydney’s gentrifying inner West. While apartment might have been bought by its current owner for 255k, possibly not so long ago, but unless it is in extremely poor condition, it could be sold for well over 1/2 million now. Might be little or no change from a million. Even if the apartment was just two rooms (a studio/bedsit), not a standard 2 bedroom unit.
booleanbach says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:28 pm
The philosophy seems to be teach them young and often, then they will hate forever.
_______________________
Wasn’t that the Jesuit philosophy as it pertains to school children?
Steve777 says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:34 pm
“Rozelle is Sydney.
The apartment is only two bedrooms.”
Rozelle is in Sydney’s gentrifying inner West. While apartment might have been bought by its current owner for 255k, possibly not so long ago, but unless it is in extremely poor condition, it could be sold for well over 1/2 million now. Might be little or no change from a million. Even if the apartment was just two rooms (a studio/bedsit), not a standard 2 bedroom unit.
____________________
Had a look myself, and you are quite right, you would be lucky to get any change out of one million.
Better to put a lazy two million aside, and get the better side of the street with the harbour views.
Lovey @ #2017 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 10:24 am
Yes you did. You said:
This quote from you can be found here: https://www.pollbludger.net/2018/03/13/essential-research-54-46-labor-21/comment-page-37/#comment-2759207
Cameron @ #2005 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 12:09 pm
Cameron
So you would be OK for Russia to ban the BBC? No whinges now about censorship etc.
Goose and gander.
In fairness “ASX goes down, ALP gets nothing” could mean many things. It’s quite vague.
I took it more like “look, the ALP’s policy announcement made the ASX go down; voters are going to hammer Labor for this and they’ll be left with nothing”. I didn’t think it had anything to do with correlating ATO revenues against ASX performance.
If the ASX goes up, it’s the Coalition Government’s brilliant economic management. If it goes down, it’s Labor’s / Bill Shorten’s fault.
Simple.
No dtt, would’t bother me, or Britain. Most Russian citizens unfortunately are either brainwashed or too scared to speak out against Putin.
Jackol is quite correct that the Howard changes have the effect of turning company tax into a withholding tax for local shareholders’ income tax.
There are arguments to support this and arguments against.
The original system instead treated the company tax analogous to a cost of business for an investment business. Again there are arguments for and against.
Equity arguments are about the weakest possible ones for retention of the cash refund. They require isolating share dividends from every single other form of income in the economy and then asserting that the benefits for those not paying any tax aren’t as good as those that do and are therefore unfair.
Once you put dividends in the context of any other way to earn an income the fairness argument is turned completely on it’s head. Every single other income source only allows you to deduct against tax due. No other deduction results in a cash credit if you aren’t actually owing tax.
Why is it fair that I have to wear 100% of my costs of business because I was in the position of not paying tax but someone making over $150 k gets almost 50% back as a tax deduction? How is equity even an argument when I pay 100% of my business costs, but someone making their income from investment get 42% of the value of the their after tax dividends handed to them as cash?
I really can’t see this dog hunting.
Cameron,
You shouldn’t copy articles here, there is a thing called copyright!
William can get in trouble if people do this!
The link is enough and any pertinent passages you wish to highlight and comment about. 🙂
daretotread. @ #2025 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 1:47 pm
For all I know they may already block it. It would hardly have an impact if it did.
Lovey @ #2017 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 10:24 am
Yes you did. You said:
You can find that here: https://www.pollbludger.net/2018/03/13/essential-research-54-46-labor-21/comment-page-37/#comment-2759207
The tax was paid by the company, not by shareholders.
The tax paid is not shareholder’s money. It is an amount calculated on the net profit of the company. The net profit was generated by the company’s customers, not its shareholders.
Lovey @ #2016 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 1:24 pm
A company’s profitability is not driven by the share price, but the other way round. The remuneration of senior management of companies might be a different thing, but that is their income, not the company’s. Except to the extent that they drain the company’s profits into their own pocket!
TPOF @ #2033 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 9:57 am
It happens on occasion here, if they post a story in any way critical of Vietnam, also the same in China when I was there last.
ratsak – as I’ve said here many (too many, I know) times over the last 2 days – to me the ‘unfair’ is the fact that at the moment I get exactly the same value out of the dividend imputation system as anyone, earning any amount. How much I earn (ok, how much I am taxed) has no impact on the value of franking credits to me, and it is the same as the value of franking credits to any other Australian investor.
After the ALP’s proposed changes that will no longer be the case. Franking credits will be worthless to me, but retain their value for most other investors. That is the ‘unfairness’ aspect in my eyes.
If the process of Dividend Imputation – converting company income to personal income – is bad, then let’s do away with it altogether, for everyone. But no, the proposal is just to take it away from some of us who don’t earn enough.
I am not overly bitter about this – it is just one of those things. What gets my goat is the various pronouncements about what it all means from those here who seem to have very little understanding and just go on about wealthy rorts. I’m all for clamping down on wealthy rorts – fix the massive holes that allow taxable income to be reduced to zero for the wealthy and a lot of this goes away, as I said …
Lovey @ #1804 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 10:29 am
The overseas companies they invest in will be taxed overseas.
They will not be able to claim any rebate even if they have taxable income and are paying income tax.
The playing field is merely being levelled.
Jackol @ #2037 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 1:03 pm
Maybe the proposal is just the first step? Certainly the changes seem to make the argument for doing away with dividend imputation altogether that much easier.
don says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:24 pm
…”The couple combined is $35 058.40 with all the lurks and perks, and our super and total income is well above that”…
So, if you are earning ‘well above’ $35,000 from super and are still working, even at 70 years old you cant possibly be receiving a pension can you?
If you are, I no longer wish to subsidise you, and it looks like very soon I won’t have too.
I will however, happily pay for your hip replacement and your grandchildren’s public school education.
Hi Barney, I have seen plenty of people do it. But, sure, if William says it is not allowed, then that’s good enough for me. I usually just link the article or article and excerpt, but given the current relevance of the topic, I thought I would paste the lot. P.S., whilst I agree with John Kehoe’s analysis of Labor’s dividend tax policy, I disagree with his support of the Coalition’s proposed company tax cuts.
PeeBee @ #1810 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 10:32 am
Just when I thought you were starting to catch on. 🙁
Companies pay company tax and there are frequent bleats here about them not paying enough.
Dividends paid to shareholders are after the company has paid company tax.
Keating, IIRC decided it was wrong for shareholders receiving dividends on which a company had paid tax, should have it taxed again in their hands. Hence the Franking Credits.
But if a shareholder is not paying tax, the double taxation issue does not arise so the Franking Credits are worthless. They are after-all, only to prevent double taxation and it hasn’t happened.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/malcolm-turnbull-says-the-nbn-was-a-mistake-2017-10
Turnbull is attempting to blame Labor for what John Howard did, ie not separating the infrastructure from the telco as everyone advised him to do when he sold it all off.
Another debacle to add to Howard’s legacy.
meher baba @ #1936 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 12:11 pm
I expected better from you Meher than to claim that a defined benefit pension is ‘almost entirely paid for by employer contributions’. I can assure you that I have a big slog of my own money and earnings on my own money in my defined benefit super. Plus the employer contributions go to accumulation schemes as well, not just defined benefit schemes. Of course, I am much happier having a defined benefit scheme than having an annuity stream from an accumulation super fund. But it’s not the giveaway you suggest.
And the person you are talking about already has a hugely generous concession from actual taxpayers of having all their income (including capital gains on trading property and shares) tax free. Nobody else has that. Just because they were in a good enough financial position – and savvy enough – to provide very well for themselves does not mean they are entitled – yes entitled – to even bigger payouts from taxpayers who have no tax shelters at all for their income.
Talking about the likelihood of war….
Kim Beazley and L Gordon Flake:
Cameron @ #2041 Thursday, March 15th, 2018 – 10:10 am
They are just as wrong to do so.
It’s about protecting William and the Blog from any adverse consequences.
🙂
@Dan Gulberry
Labor was trying to seperate Telstra.
But Turnbull turned NBN into Telstra by allowing former ISP staff/board members to be part of NBN Board, instead of Industry experts.
twat he is.
He just pointing finger blaming.
Former CBA boss David Murray is no bleeding heart lefty rich basher, but back in 2014 he suggested that tax breaks for superannuation, including the imputation system, needed looking at.
https://theconversation.com/murray-pushes-for-fewer-super-tax-breaks-but-change-is-unlikely-35158
Needless to say Abbott and Hockey and now Turnbull and Morrison are not the least bit interested.
and Labor is not blameless. Wayne Swan could hardly wait to declare Ken Henry’s tax review a dud.
We can’t have a sensible debate on tax while the focus is on winners and losers. There will always be a loser, life is like that. The key to reform is to minimise or eliminate the damage for those who are starting behind anyway.
I think that in the last decade or so the winners have been racing away from the field and we need to have a good hard look at the rules.
Labor is doing that. The Tories are offering the winners a tax cut.
poroti says:
Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 1:18 pm
…” gold koala stamp for you !”…
.
Cheers,
I should probably be more conscious of offending the elderly.