Latest Finance & Tax Stories

Coalition spending over the past six years has been nearly half that of the past 40 years and is forecast to drop further. With many services already cut to the bone, even the Parliamentary Budget Office has warned such ‘spending restraint’ is likely to be unsustainable. In a post-pandemic world, bringing forward tax cuts that only benefit high earners would be irresponsible, writes Michael Keating.

Developers limit construction in all sorts of ways to maximise profits – from building in stages to reducing the number of properties for sale to letting planning approvals lapse and then reapplying at a higher density. We need to stop buying into the myth that red tape causes high house prices.

KPMG and the other Big Four audit firms are at a crossroads. Their work with multinational clients to skirt ethical accounting rules and regulations has been on show time and time again. They need to decide what they really are: a salesforce or – what they profess to be – an accounting profession.

The tax paid by superannuation funds on their earnings is often less than 10%, much lower than the headline rate of 15%, according to research by the University of Technology Sydney. And in an industry worth $2.7 trillion, this means a huge difference in the tax take for government. Callum Foote reports.

On nearly every economic indicator of wellbeing, Australians have gone backwards in the past six years of the Coalition government. Yet it, and particularly the Finance Minister, is lauded at every turn. Alan Austin takes a closer look at the figures.

The Government’s plan for economic recovery is wrong. Michael West investigates Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the false assumption that the national Budget is like the household budget, or a business. They are already creating new money while denying the proposition that creating new money will expand the economy; preferring to punish casual workers and Arts students, and pursue austerity instead.

In 2018, when Westpac executives skimped on embedding proper controls to track financial crimes, they earned significant bonuses after reporting an operating profit of A$8 billion but they put children at risk of sexual abuse. The bank is now facing a $1 billion penalty, but only $A20 million has been clawed back from those 38 individuals. Nathan Lynch reports.

Is the Morrison Government’s HomeBuilder scheme another case of pork-barrelling which targets the Liberal base? Financial adviser Harry Chemay says it will benefit some first-home buyers and the building lobby – but can also be accessed by wealthy self-funded retirees to increase the value in their home and access the pension.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, various vested interests have been lobbying for the reforms they’d like governments to deliver under the guise of economic stimulus. The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) is no exception. Last week, the MCA published a lis​t ​of “immediate reform priorities to accelerate economic recovery”. ACCR’s Dan Gocher reports.

Why is Lendlease claiming JobKeeper? What is Queensland’s largest private sector employer, Blue Care, doing claiming JobKeeper when its revenues from government have actually been rising? Michael West investigates the latest mega-rort by the Big End of Town.

The Coalition won the 2013 federal election beating their chest about Labor’s “debt and deficit”. Thanks to COVID-19, we’re unlikely to see a surplus in our lifetime or our children’s. But, let’s not forget that the current debt blow-out occurred well before the coronavirus impacted the economy. Alan Austin checks how Australia shapes up against other OECD countries.

Mirvac, an $8 billion property juggernaut, is claiming the JobKeeker subsidy. Michael West reports on large corporations rorting taxpayers by pocketing their employees’ PAYG tax while avoiding their obligation to pay entitlements to workers they have sacked.

Canada has become the latest country to refuse pandemic bailout money for tax dodgers. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joins leaders of Denmark, Poland and France in axing financial aid to corporations registered in offshore tax havens. Noel Turnbull reports.

The switch has been flicked from saving lives to saving money via a Josh Frydenberg press blitz today. The newspapers as one ran big on the same story. Get ready for “reform”

Just because Alan Joyce has a Masters degree in mathematics and Michael McCormack is one of two of Australian cabinet ministers who do not claim to have a tertiary education, does not mean Joyce got the better of McCormack in the latest airline subsidies negotiation

If this was the first time Australia’s cosseted superannuation sector found itself in a crisis-induced crunch, you could forgive the industry its current consternation. This is however starting to look like a replay of the Global Financial Crisis, little more than a decade ago. Worryingly, unless there is genuine reform, the next crisis will likely produce the same outcome. Harry Chemay reports.

Virgin Australia is pleading for a bail-out twice what its shares a worth. Its wealthy foreign shareholders can afford to pay. They’ve scampered. What is the answer? The answer lies in an Act of British Parliament, that is Section 51 of Australia’s Constitution. Michael West reports on a neat solution to a very untidy problem, the looming wave of defaults by large corporations.

Aren't the banks lovely to let their home loan customers take a six month break from mortgage repayments! Only one catch ... they are charging compound interest; interest on their interest. Michael West reports on the hardship of the banks versus the hardship of their...

Credit card rates are now up to 80 times higher than the Reserve Bank of Australia’s cash rate. Despite the coronavirus chaos and the banks swimming in an abundance of cheap credit, their credit card remain at all-time highs. Callum Foote reports.

The Morrison Government’s emergency measures to protect the economy are another massive subsidy from embattled taxpayers to Australia’s largest corporations. They are a failure of government to govern.

The Morrison government just bailed out Australia’s airlines with a $715 million relief package. This corporate welfare response is the harbinger of things to come