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Australian Family Tax Reform and the Targeting Fallacy
Author(s) -
Apps Patricia,
Rees Ray
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8462.2010.00590.x
Subject(s) - economics , payment , tax reform , fallacy , labour economics , income tax , tax deduction , progressive tax , tax rate , public economics , state income tax , monetary economics , gross income , finance , philosophy , epistemology
Over recent decades, Australia's highly progressive, individual‐based taxation of families has been replaced by a system that tends towards joint taxation with an inverted U‐shaped rate scale. The reform has been implemented by introducing family‐income‐targeted child payments (now Family Tax Benefit Part A) and by lowering tax rates on higher incomes. The new system has shifted the burden of taxation to two‐earner families on low and average wages and, in particular, to working married mothers as second earners. For reasons of fairness and efficiency, we propose returning to more progressive individual taxation and universal family payments.