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QUACKTASTIC posted:i forget my original point do one with a carp
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Apr 1, 2017 12:08
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quote:Coal-related pollutants continue to rise at many of the country's biggest mines, power plants and export facilities, prompting demands for stricter controls to limit health damage costing billions of dollars a year.
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Apr 2, 2017 21:34
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open24hours posted:The Greens seem kind of maxed out, they've been treading water for the past few federal elections and their polling is pretty stable. I don't know what they can do if they want to become a mainstream party, but they'd better get on it. they need a brand change. a lot of people are really suspicious of 'greenies' (i.e. vegan SJWs who want to ban fishing, hunting and 4wd-ing) and they assume the Greens are basically a party devoted to all of those things. I reckon they'd be a lot more successful if they styled themselves as a socialist democrat party with an interest in the environment rather than an environmentalist party with an interest in socialist democracy.
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Apr 3, 2017 05:55
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Well-off Australians are slashing their personal tax bills at a cost of billions of dollars a year to other taxpayers through the widening use of secretive family trusts. But while trusts are flourishing, and the government is battling a big budget deficit, neither the Coalition nor Labor has tackled what critics describe as the "sacred ground" of tax minimisation. Unpublished figures provided exclusively to Fairfax Media by the Australian Taxation Office reveal almost 643,000 discretionary trusts (most family trusts are this kind) in Australia in the 2014-15 financial year, the most recent year for which figures are available. That is almost twice the number of 20 years earlier, an increase that far outstrips population growth. The increase is likely to have been sharper in the two years since 2015 as other popular tax minimisation options – superannuation and negative gearing in particular – come under heavy political pressure, and financial planners and accountants market trusts as an alternative. Trusts come in different forms, including fixed and unit trusts. In total there were 824,000 trusts in 2015 according to the tax office. Some are dedicated to charitable and community purposes, including caring for children and those with disabilities. But discretionary trusts, which are used to manage investments including property and to run businesses of all sizes, are promoted for their preferential tax treatment. Australian Bureau of Statistics data indicates that while discretionary trusts are often used for small and medium businesses, trust wealth is heavily skewed to the richest Australians. Almost 90 per cent of trust assets are held by the wealthiest 20 per cent of income earners. While rarely mentioned in recent tax and revenue debates, discretionary trusts are a substantial part of the Australian economy. The unpublished tax office data shows they hold assets upwards of $600 billion, and generate profit of almost $80 billion. The key to the popularity of discretionary trusts is the flexibility which allows high-income breadwinners to split trust income and distribute it to family members on low incomes and low tax rates – adult children at university for example. In the process, the high-income earner slashes their own tax liability. The distribution of income can be varied each year. So, if a child leaves university and secures a well-paid job, their share can be transferred to a younger brother starting university, or a retired grandmother. Exactly how much tax is paid nationwide on income from trusts is unclear. The opacity of trusts means information is limited. Where companies are required to put information about directors, shareholders and company finances (for larger firms) into the public domain, there is no equivalent for trusts. Surprisingly, the tax office is unable to say how much trust beneficiaries pay in tax. But Fairfax Media has established that at least one key federal agency estimates that tax paid by trust beneficiaries is about 25 per cent of profits - well below the marginal tax rates that those who control the trusts would otherwise be paying. In a new analysis for Fairfax Media, University of NSW tax law expert Dale Boccabella has "conservatively" estimated the level of foregone tax revenue at $2 billion a year. graphic He said trusts were widely used to minimise tax and for "asset protection" which, he said, was code for people either avoiding debts or depriving a divorcing partner of their fair share of joint property. "When the overwhelming use of the discretionary trust is tax minimisation, defeating creditors and frustrating divorcing spouses of their fair property rights, the case for a comprehensive review of the institution of the discretionary trust is pretty strong." The Coalition and Labor do not have policy positions on trusts and taxation. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison were approached to provide comment for this story and their personal views about trusts. Neither has responded. The powerful rural lobby is often seen as the major obstacle to trust reform because farmers often use trusts for succession planning and protecting farm assets. Its political clout is reflected in the Greens' current policy of taxing trusts like companies, with farming trusts exempted. The Tax Institute is the professional association for tax specialists including accountants, lawyers and tax agents. Its senior tax counsel Bob Deutsch said superannuation, property and share investment using borrowed funds, and trusts, had long been the favoured tax-planning options in Australia. "What has happened over the course of the last decade is that super has to some extent lost its mojo – both super and negative gearing seem to be in the firing line one way or another," said Deutsch. "That leaves you with the third leg of the tripod which is discretionary trusts. It's an area that will be more and more in focus." 
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Apr 6, 2017 11:33
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this seems to have vanished
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Apr 9, 2017 00:18
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I wonder if i should look at a career in insolvency and restructuring? I can't help but feel something pretty big and bad is heading our way and picking over the corpses of failed businesses seems like as good as any way to weather it
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Apr 9, 2017 00:19
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/850809598701207553 lol surely he has some undiagnosed mental illness or something
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Apr 9, 2017 01:12
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MonoAus posted:Is the concept of wind farm really that new and scary to concern people so much?? Anti wind farm groups go around to regions where they are being proposed and spread a bunch of bullshit about the health effects of the turbines. People then get sick because they expect to (it's called a nocebo effect). In WA and Europe where anti windfarm groups are nowhere near as prevalent they don't seem to suffer the same 'wind farm syndrome' as the people where these groups are active. There's been a bunch of reviews into the health effects of windfarms (the LNP didn't like the answers given in a couple of them and told them to do it again and find that windfarms are bad), people are incapable of differentiating windfarm noise from infrasound generated by traffic or whatever and people who believe in 'windfarm syndrome' were made to feel sick in a dead silent room because they were told windfarm infrasound was being played at them.
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Apr 10, 2017 09:33
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at what point can he be admitted into care?
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Apr 10, 2017 11:53
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Cleretic posted:Okay, so what should perhaps be my course of action going forward in responding to the VEC handing me an 'invalid response to apparent failure to vote'? Because apparently the response of 'I did vote, here's when I sent it and where I sent it from' is not a valid or acceptable response (at which point I'm wondering what IS acceptable because what the gently caress else could I provide). Dunno but there's been a huge furore about it on the ABC, it sounds like a bunch of people got them when they shouldn't have but the VEC reckons it's something to do with the date people sent back their response forms. I think there's some sort of review process the VEC has for people appealing the decision but gently caress knows how long that will take. On the advice of this thread I told them I voted but Australia Post probably lost it and I haven't heard back but I recently moved house so there might be a fine waiting for me at my old place.
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Apr 12, 2017 09:24
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Cleretic posted:Well that's definitely not gonna work. Not sure. I think they'll cave in eventually though once Jon Faine or Raph Epstein turn the screws enough. I mean they've had people calling up 774 saying multiple family members voted on the same day yet some got a fine and the others didn't. Clearly something has hosed up along the way there but the VEC just hasn't got the balls to admit it yet.
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Apr 12, 2017 09:48
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are there any viewer/listener numbers available for his tripe?
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Apr 12, 2017 11:19
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Scarecow posted:So is this what it feels like to be the crazy one? everything im reading and looking at online screams to me we are in a giant loving housing bubble yet every single person I talk too is like "nahhh mate safe as houses, theres no bubble its totally normal to buy a 2 bedroom shoebox place in kilsyth for 700k" it's probably a case of cognitive dissonance in action. No one with investment properties wants to believe their multi-million dollar portfolio is only worth what people are prepared to pay for it and that the instant people decide not to pay that much their hard earned net worth will vanish without a trace The ones who are capable of thinking rationally about it are probably quietly moving their properties on to some other buyer, presumably while claiming how the prices can only ever go up up UP
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Apr 13, 2017 22:12
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Nibbles! posted:If you keep negative gearing it's not really a bubble in the traditional sense, invester money will always be pouring in. There was a column on the ABC that pointed out that because such a significant proportion of property owners are investors now the traditional ideas about what might cause a crash may not apply. For example, investors don't consider an investment property a home that you try and hold onto until you can't afford to pay the mortgage, for them it's about the same as a bunch of shares and if they think it isn't going to increase in value any more they sell and put their money elsewhere. If they see a scheme that grandfathers NG, and think it will cause house prices to stagnate and then slowly fall, they'll try to get in ahead and sell before they have to sit through 3 years of their asset not growing. Which is why I wonder if the bigger, institutional investors might be quietly moving their property on. We came within a whisker of having a Labor government who promised to grandfather NG in power, the polls are even worse now and blind freddy can see that negative gearing/CGTD is blowing up into a huge political issue which may not survive past the next election. Private investors may have drank too deeply from the koolaid for all this to register but maybe some of the bigger investors are taking a more objective view of it (or will soon). It's one thing to ignore APRA's and the RBA's warnings but once the ratings agencies and international banks start weighing in it might start to sink in that there is a bit of a problem brewing.
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Apr 14, 2017 05:58
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Nibbles! posted:The difference with standard bubbles and our property market is that it isn't the inflated market itself people are trying to cash in on, it's the tax implications that are driving them to do it. Negative gearing only makes sense if you can sell your property and make a gain though, otherwise people would be racking up any old tax deductible expense. As soon as investors think that house prices have peaked they'll be offloading them as quick as they can to make sure they maximise their gain.
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Apr 14, 2017 07:29
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which one?
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Apr 14, 2017 09:33
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Why the gently caress do we need to import accountants and IT workers? Surely we can train enough of those through the university system. Rather than having a list of approved job descriptions it'd probably be easier to just slap a $20k fee on any company looking at bringing in a 457. That way if it's something really important they can get someone regardless of the job but it might discourage recruiting a bunch of Cambodian electricians to work in the mines or whatever, plus $20k is probably relatively small compared to what you'd be paying someone with skills genuinely impossible to find in Australia. If we were really clever we could even adjust the fee based on the current unemployment/underemployment rate
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Apr 18, 2017 22:11
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Box of Bunnies posted:2017 continuing to be good counterpoint  
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Apr 21, 2017 10:17
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 22:17 |
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normally balding blokes who shave their heads look better for it but somehow dutton has come out looking even more potato-like
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Apr 25, 2017 01:47
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