Spender to hold own tax summit – wants more than a dusty document

Earlier this month, Henry used an address to tax experts to warn the Australian tax system was now in a “parlous state”.

The man who headed the last full review of the tax system, which reported to the Rudd government in 2010, said the country needed to find improved ways to raise the revenue required to provide the goods and services demanded by the public.

“It is not capable of raising sufficient revenue to fund the activities of government. Certainly not today. Far less at any time in the future,” he told The Tax Institute.

Apart from tax experts, members of the parliament, including crossbench MPs, will attend the one-day discussion, which will primarily focus on the tax and economic growth issues facing the country by 2035.

A green paper would come out of the roundtable, which would then act as the basis for a series of public roundtable discussions that would include representatives from different parts of the economy. These would include the business sector, resources, community organisations and the union movement.

Spender said the recent debate about the government’s plans to reduce the concessional tax rate on superannuation balances of more than $3 million had highlighted the demand from her own community in the seat of Wentworth, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, for a better debate about tax.

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She said many of her constituents could understand the government’s superannuation proposals but had legitimate questions about how it would operate, its treatment of capital gains and whether the $3 million threshold should be indexed to inflation.

“People are also saying that they can see the argument for changes to superannuation, but then ask why isn’t there a super profits tax on coal and gas,” Spender said.

“They want to see a tax system that is calibrated to cover the increasing costs that the budget is going to carry, but that is also going to help drive growth and innovation.”

Spender said the tax system in its current shape would not be able to deal with the challenges that were likely to emerge over the next decade, including the level of debt now carried by the federal government, the demand for extra services such as health and the cost of dealing with climate change.

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