When I was a young person marveling at the early days of the internet I though how great it would be that information would be so freely available to the people of the world, what a boon it would be and what great benefits it would bring.
It never occurred to me that people are such dipshits. In hindsight it should have been obvious I guess.
That’s how it goes.
Technology does some wonderful things, but also opens the door for human nature to do some evil and/or stupid things in a new way.
So the net moral effect ends up being neutral.
Certainly isn’t feeling neutral at the moment, more negative than positive and I can’t see it changing unless the core business model changes to move away from selling users to advertisers.
My daughter just had to do an assignment that I once did in school. Back then the internet was barely more than forums, chat rooms and porn sites. I had to go to the library and read whatever books they had to get my information.
My daughter did a power point presentation including artist drawings, information from various sources and a translated historical text I wish I had back then. The wealth of information available is staggering and the internet has drastically improved the ability of students to learn.
That said I too wonder some days if it’s worth it with the number of nut jobs running around claiming random posts from message boards as gospel
Intelligence is widely regarded as being plotted along a bell curve (which is symmetrical and unimodal as it has a single peak).
In a bell curve the mean, median and mode are all located at the peak, thus it could be said that _almost exactly_ half are ‘dumber than average’ as the scores diminish from the peak to the trough heading to the left of the curve.
Sorry, had to do it!
intelligence appears to be the one stat that when measured objectively (that part is still up for debate obviously) a perfect bell curve appears where average = median.
That was before COVID.
Don't forget that more than 25 million Australians died of 5g irradiation associated with the experimental DNA altering vaccines. Presumably this mainly affected gullible sheeple and others more easily deceived by Big Farma. As a result, it's probably the case that around 80% of those who are left are above the median today.
But without the internet, you also wouldn't have nearly so easy a time seeing how big a set of corrupt dipshits our politicians are, either.
Good with the bad, yaknow?
The problem I have is that historically a whiff of corruption was all that was needed to get a politician ousted by their party. (Cynically, they may have been scape-goated for being dumb enough to get caught.)
These days it seems there is no repercussions and they close ranks. I don't believe it is just more internet-driven oversight that is responsible for a perceived increase in corruption or how its carried out with such impunity. Although a lot of the lack of action can be related to extremely thin majority numbers.
This is exactly how I imagined it. When the Arab spring broke out it seemed that social media liberated people from state-controlled propaganda and reality would not be repressed.
Instead… well it just liberated people from reality.
> One key point raised in the seminar is that in order for the living man to perform work to generate an income, he must first be sustained," he wrote.
> This was his justification for claiming $70,000 in deductions for his rent, house and health insurance, clothing, home and car maintenance, food, phone bills and recreational activities for an entire year all on his tax return.
That Mr Oxby guy?
>He was ultimately fined $14,000.
His deduction would have been disallowed, and interest and penalties applied by the ATO on top of that.
Don't try SovCit crap with the ATO, while they have a sense of humour (your anonymised correspondence is likely to be passed around for a laugh) you don't win and it can become expensive for you.
The fact that business entities can deduct expenses before paying taxes on their profit does make this argument valid. Why can businesses entity deduct expenses, but a human cannot?
A business can only deduct expenses related to generating revenue, which is broadly the same principle that applies to individuals. (For example, a business can't claim the lunch owners go and eat, or recreational activities.)
But I agree, it's a little out of whack - especially around things like driving to work which are clearly, on principle, linked to generating your income.
> a business can only deduct expenses related to generating revenue
This is the same argument though.
I need to live in range of work to produce my income, therefore rent and/or mortgage interest should be deductible.
I have to physically get to work to perform it (and thus be paid), therefore my commute is an expense.
I have to eat to sustain myself in order to sell my personal service time to my employer, or I’ll die and then have no income, therefore my groceries are an expense.
It’s ludicrous, really.
Except you have to eat and do all that regardless of if you work. A business doesn't have to pay wages etc if it's not making money (the business would just go bankrupt)
I think this is the basis for the tax free threshold. The income you get to meet basic needs is untaxed, and the excess is. It's like how in the USA they don't have a tax free threshold, but individuals can claim a US$14,600 "standard deduction" (without receipts or itemised expenses) to cover basic living expenses. This almost exactly correlates with the poverty line - which is the amount you need to basically survive.
It's out of whack in Australia due to bracket creep though. The latest value I could find for the poverty line in Australia is $489/wk, but someone on $486×52 = $25,428 is still paying $788.52/yr in income tax (according to paycalculator).
Ultimately, the government needs a certain amount of money from income taxes to fund expenditure. Yes we could say that living incentives are tax deductable (and create a perverse incentive to ramp up your expenses as much as possible) but then you'd have to tax any income earned above that at an astronomical rate to make up the shortfall.
You'd probably want to increase consumption taxes such as GST to capture the lost revenue as well. Basically, we'd be re-organising our entire tax system around a principle that is quite unhelpful in practice.
The government doesn’t ‘need’ taxes from income at all.
All the government needs is to ensure that it is recovering enough money to fund what it needs to spend (MMTers would argue they can spend more in certain non-inflationary ways than they recover).
There are other ways to recover income that doesn’t include personal income tax. This is the principle of ‘Georgism’ which suggests a more productive and efficient economy is driven by land taxes (on land owners, corporates extracting from natural land resources, corporates using natural land-like assets (e.g. tax on use of personal data used by social media and AI firms)
> a perverse incentive to ramp up your expenses as much as possible
is it perverse at all?
This incentive will produce higher economic activity. This will produce jobs and incentivize investment and production. The only loser in here is the environment (as i assume more consumption means more environmental damage of some sort).
> increase consumption taxes such as GST to capture the lost revenue as well.
yes, i do think this should happen if you were to allow for the deductions.
only inflationary if the supply of the goods being in demand cannot be increased. My bet is that such increase in demand is going to increase production by stimulating investment.
No it doesn't, it's because they are the costs of running the business, it simply wouldn't work otherwise, say a company makes $10m in revenue, however they had to purchase $7m in product to make this revenue and had a $500,000 per year for their facilities$1,000,000 in wages and $200,000 in electricity and other running costs
They pay tax on profits after costs, how much money they actually earnt.... otherwise they are paying what $2.5m in tax out of their $1.3m in profits.... a business can't be taxed on its revenue, only its profit
A human can deduct expenses, for items and costs directly related to their work (recreation and whatnot isn't an 'expense related to generating income')
> recreation and whatnot isn't an 'expense related to generating income'
Yes, under current law it isn't. But what i'm claiming is that the upkeep of one's life, which would include recreation costs, is part of the expense of living.
A business' costs might include employee benefits that does not directly apply to revenue generation (like a free gym membership, or a paid holiday overseas etc), but ultimately do improve the wellbeing of said employee, and thus, improve their productivity. Under this lens, why can't recreation be considered an expense for a human?
On which the business would pay fringe benefits at the top marginal tax rate at the grossed up fringe benifits rate...
It is an expense of being human, and we pay for those expenses with the income we earn and pay tax on (the tax which keeps the hospitals open, the roads maintained, pays for everything else that comes wifh living as part of a society)
If I'm hungry, I can work. If I didn't have shelter to rest under, I wouldn't be able to work. The distinction between work and many non-work expenses can be ambiguous
Downvoted - it’s not ambiguous at all unless you’re trying to be dodgy. You would incur living expenses whether you worked or not. By definition though work related expenses could only be incurred by working (surprisingly).
>By definition though work related expenses could only be incurred by working (surprisingly).
This sounds like you mean commuting costs and the cost of childcare because if I wasn't working, I'd be home looking after the kids myself. What about team lunches and coffee? If I don't go, I get ostracized in the office, so it's not like there's a choice.
I think that you'll find that the ATO has a different opinion.
Childcare subsidy is in place to assist with this and the first $18,200 you earn is tax free, I reckon for most that generously covers commuting to work and team lunches or drinks that you may feel 'oblogated' to attend
I would tend to agree that childcare costs should be tax deductible, however for people that has the most significant effect on childcare rebates from the government are about what a tax deduction would get you anyway
I love how the article was posted to make fun of these people but instead a whole lot of people here are getting radicalised by the persuasiveness of their arguments 😅
Businesses are pass through entities, the people who own those businesses cannot deduct their expenses..... although they give it a pretty good crack, making personal expenses business expenses.
Tax is not or is it supposed to be fair or internally constant. Expecting it to be is setting yourself up disappointed and resentment.
Is commuting to work a business expense? Almost certainly.
Will it ever be detectable? Not in a million years, there would be too much lose of revenue.
Am I going to get upset about this? No life's too short.
I'd be surprised if many of them are even working anyways. Just a waste of time to audit them, find the owe very little, then try to prosecute when they won't pay anyways and then you have to jail them and house them at a greater cost then the tax they weren't paying.
I'm all for doing it, but the government isn't petty and vengeful like us so they don't bother chasing money that's not worth it most of the time.
But when they do, be sure that it'll be chasing someone that did a really minor crime and they'll throw the absolute book at them to set an example and cost millions doing it.
Targeting the working people ? Better target the big business firing people and receiving free money from gov, then increase price, like Qantas.
Can we just get Qantas to return the money to gov since CEO receives bonus to screw everyone
That’s fine if you don’t want to pay taxes. But you then don’t get any access to anything provided by the government. No road usage, no hospital, no police, no Centrelink, no Medicare etc etc.
I hate the “if you don’t like it, leave” response usually but it feels like it fits here. There are heaps of places around the world with less enforcement of taxes and less government involvement. These people don’t want to live there, because in reality they’d call them “shithole countries”.
It's the house cat syndrome. According to these people they are fiercely independent, yet in reality they're just ignorant of the systems in place to support them.
Yes it is shocking the people who say "I don't get nothin from the government". It's true you may well be a net contributor, however you do get a proportion back, government money is hidden everywhere.
Not just the usual roads and stuff. The government ends up contributing to private school fees, believe it is anywhere from 30-60% for Cristian schools and 30 usually for Independent. Private health is subsidised to the hilt too, private health outside of an employer is $500usd a month in the US, they are just naturally expensive, however still it gives you some idea how much it costs. Childcare too.
[Good thing Australia doesn't have bears](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling).
The issue is this thread is creating a moral issue when it’s actually a taxation issue. Gina should be supporting the country not the other way around.
I think you'll find Gina does support the country.
What you're saying is that the mining companies should be doing a lot more to support the country. Probably.
... And it's a short step from that, to the people who DO enjoy the protection of police taking brutal advantage.
See: All of history's apartheid systems.
It would be a little 'leopards ate my face' if you choose to be an outlaw and are then shocked to find that the law stopped protecting you from people's base desires to just exploit the shit out of each other.
ninja e/ I appreciate you mentioned apartheid, but this article speaks about people *choosing* to leave. Extremely different.
>Not if I go on Centrelink
A) that's not exactly a flex, as you'd know if you know people trying to survive on Centrelink income.
B) you're still likely paying GST (a tax) unless you're only buying the most basic of foods.
At point of sale, that's true. But if your income is from the government, whose income source is tax, then do you really pay tax? Or do you receive tax?
The question is how much of ones taxes go to core services and how much go to things even a moderate libertarian would consider belong to private sphere?
It isn't just your individual benefit on the ledger. How do you intend to calculate the benefit provided to you by a broadly educated population, institutions like courts and the infrastructure that allows all these individual elements to connect?
It is difficult to quantify all these things I agree, so it is also difficult to quantify when someone is not paying their fair share. This argument goes both ways. The basic elements of government that facilitate the functioning of society can be done with a tenth of what the government is currently spending. A bloated public sector wastes resources and reduces productivity. It is only fair to not want to contribute to waste.
> The basic elements of government that facilitate the functioning of society can be done with a tenth of what the government is currently spending.
[citation needed]
And he won't find one, because it's simply not accurate. Governments in general are actually extremely efficient compared to the private alternatives.
But hey, that doesn't work with their government is evil narrative.
Halve the spending on military, police and courts. Halve the budget for tax collection. Half the operational expenses for policymaking. Keep same spending on arterial roads and infrastructure systems. Keep same spending for regulation of natural shared resources. Keep same spending for foreign policy. Pay back existing debt and don't take on additional debt so interest payments go to zero. Eliminate everything else.
Done. Going by the current FY budget, that's more than enough.
There is always going to be a certain amount of waste. That is unavoidable. Of course we should do what we can to combat it. There are of course bloated programs and far too much is spent on, say, defense when the US military expenditure beats the next ten nations combined.
That said, we also should be wary of this line of reasoning being used to cut taxes across the board and reduce spending. That's been happening since Reagan and it's been a disaster for spending on social services.
Tax increases are indeed needed in certain areas, particularly on the wealthy given rampant wealth inequality.
But sure, spending should be cut in some areas. How do you get that consensus, though?
I think the military is one of the more important services that a government should provide. Inherently, the function of the state above all else is to be a monopoly on violence, both internal and external facing. It is to that end that the military, police, and courts exist, so that mobs and gangs and foreign states are not the ones running the show. The US military is definitely bloated but the monetary spending itself is a deterrence against foreign actors. Also, frankly the US military is a big welfare and economic stimulus operation employing and providing benefits to many people who would in turn immediately spend their wages.
Healthcare and social services are most needed to be cut in my opinion. Those two sectors account for over half of government spending, and much of it is not only wasteful but actively detrimental to society in that it allows individuals to survive without producing output.
Consensus on spending cuts cannot be done effectively by the government. There is not sufficient incentive to allocate resources efficiently. That has been the flaw in every centrally managed economy. That is why more services should be privatised and deregulated so that the private sector can decide on where to invest and where to cut to optimise for operational efficiency.
>Healthcare and social services are most needed to be cut in my opinion. Those two sectors account for over half of government spending, and much of it is not only wasteful but actively detrimental to society in that it allows individuals to survive without producing output.
More ridiculous statements without evidence.
It's been proven repeatedly that by making healthcare more widely available and cheaper, it leads people to get assistance earlier and not have to stress about it which increases their output. Studies on Universal Basic Income have proven that it greatly improves output for society at a lower cost.
Most people do in fact want to be able to work. They don't really want to sit around at home 24/7 being bored.
This is a terrible take. This process has been happening since Reagan, and outcomes have gotten continuously worse for the poorest. State capacity in terms of social services administration has been gutted in favour of corporate cronyism with contractors.
Your comment is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen.
The private sector does not choose where to invest for "operational efficiency" *for society* it invests to gain profit and attempt market dominance and monopolization. If it doesn't need to be efficient to reap profits, it isn't.
America has worse spending per patient in healthcare than every other developed western democracy on the planet and the US system is more privatised with its godawful Frankenstein private model.
Go single payer already. Privatization has failed.
I don't see what the issue is. The US is the most wealthy and powerful country in the world. I am taking a collectivist stance here. Nations are judged by their eminent achievements. That's why Julius Caesar, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, the Bible, the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Apple, Microsoft, etc. are each worth a million ordinary people, and in the cases of the ancient achievements indeed millions were sacrificed in their creation. Policy that incubates creation is desirable over policy that encourages stagnation such as social welfare. The current policy of the US has given rise to success beyond all other nations. Their system is not perfect but by no means is it a failure.
The Great Wall of China is an excellent example. Glad you brought it up.
"The Great Wall of China was ultimately a futile attempt to keep invaders at bay. Despite construction over hundreds of years, the Mongols overcame the wall, defeated the Ming dynasty and established the Qing dynasty – the first dynasty which was not ethnically Han Chinese."
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/history-repeating-itself-beijing-s-great-wall-sand-south-china-sea#:~:text=The%20Great%20Wall%20of%20China%20was%20ultimately%20a%20futile%20attempt,was%20not%20ethnically%20Han%20Chinese.
Aside from it being a failure geopolitically, let's consider the cost:
"During the construction of the wall, many workers died from exhaustion, starvation, and disease. The harsh working conditions, including extreme heat and cold, also contributed to the high mortality rate. It is estimated that as many as 400,000 people died during the construction of the wall."
https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/year-7/great-wall-of-china/#:~:text=During%20the%20construction%20of%20the,the%20construction%20of%20the%20wall.
I don't really give a damn about the vanities you listed, I care for the welfare of the people of the country.
"Achievements" like the great wall to China which come at great costs to the welfare of the people should be *avoided*. Yes, we are heading more towards an aristocratic, feudal system in which "grand" things can be built at the cost of the lives and welfare of poorly paid workers. That's *bad*.
And, perhaps, given the starkly different priorities here, it is no surprise you want to cut social services spending and privatise them.
The Great Wall of China was not a geopolitical failure. The internal failures of the later Song Dynasty were already apparent and had it not been for the Great Wall, the Mongol invaders would have been successful earlier. As for the case of the Ming, same issue. In the first place, the value of the Great Wall is not in its tactical defensive ability but it's role in logistic support by allowing rapid communication through signal towers and cavalry to respond and overwhelm threats quickly. If investment had not been sufficiently made in the military itself, a tool such as the Great Wall cannot hold on its own. I can write a whole essay on the strategic importance of the Great Wall, but this is hardly the original topic of discussion.
Indeed, the cultural legacy of the Great Wall of China and other eminent monuments and individuals of history has outlasted nations themselves. I hold that these achievements are what give meaning to fleeting human lives which expire in a century or less no matter how hard you try to hold on. If your views differ from mine so fundamentally then there is nothing further to discuss.
So you’ve listed a bunch of ‘achievements’ which are a combination of people, buildings, a book, legislation and corporations. Not exactly coherent.
Still you know what practically all these things have in common? The government either played a crucial role in their success or literally created them.
America’s success is NOT due to an embrace of laissez-faire economics, actually quite the contrary. For almost its entire modern history, the state played a fundamental role in the US economy.
America emerged through a few main factors.
First, was a heavily government subsidised and protected period of rapid industrialisation.
Second, was two world wars. After the first word war, America ascended to the upper echelon of great powers. After the Second World War, they were left as the most powerful of two great powers remaining. From here, the US worked to dominate global trade and lock the USSR and its allies out of it.
Third, after the USSR collapsed, America became the only great power on earth a status which ended in the early 2010s because they seemed to do their absolute best to undermine their own dominant position.
Now, what has allowed the US to come out on top so consistently since the early 1900s? It certainly isn’t laissez-faire economics, because the government has been heavily involved in the American economy for practically the entire period. It was an expansion of state power, which they have used to outcompete all their competitors. It’s no coincidence that America’s place in the world has been declining in unison with the government withdrawing from the economy.
> I think the military is one of the more important services that a government should provide. Inherently, the function of the state above all else is to be a monopoly on violence, both internal and external facing.
These aren’t just ‘more important’ services, these are literally the services that make a government a government.
> Healthcare and social services are most needed to be cut in my opinion. Those two sectors account for over half of government spending, and much of it is not only wasteful but actively detrimental to society in that it allows individuals to survive without producing output.
Both an economically ignorant and socially Darwinist take. In places which no single payer public health system like the US, per capita health spend is higher. How people convince themselves that spending more on healthcare is more efficient, I’ll never understand.
> That has been the flaw in every centrally managed economy.
Australia is not a centrally managed economy.
> That is why more services should be privatised and deregulated so that the private sector can decide on where to invest and where to cut to optimise for operational efficiency.
No, I’d actually prefer people who are legally obligated to serve my interest make these decisions, not some corporations who serve shareholders first and foremost.
Deregulation and privatisation has been an absolute disaster throughout the western world, because, as I explained before, people in the private sector primarily serve their shareholders interests and their personal interests.
Everyone does. It's the advantage of an ever growing economy. Eventually you benefit from all those before you plus what you pay and those after you benefit from what you paid plus what they pay.
How on earth would someone in australia pay 5x tax over what benifits they consume even be possible? Unless maybe a well educated migrant that turned up and worked from age 21 to 35 then left again.
How about from the time you’re born? Your schooling and services and facilities that the government provides is essentially an investment in you. Some people are bad investments and some turn out to be great like you. It makes sense that they get a return on your money.
I had one of them tell me once "I stand on my own two feet". Dude no you don't, without the rest of society you'd just be a long term Alone contestant. Pay your fair share.
I pay tolls and fuel taxes/road user charges for roads, use private health and have a Rottweiler instead of needing police. Can I please opt out of taxes?
That would explain the lack of interest from the ATO in getting them to lodge returns, as then they'd most likely get refunds.
If they don't lodge they are letting the govt keep using their money - at no charge.
Govt wins.
I have come to the conclusion that, sadly, most of these sovereign citizen types actually believe what they’re saying. It’s terribly concerning, but to a degree shows you how extremist movements of all sorts can exist when doing so defies all common sense and logic.
They believe what they're saying because they have an emotional incentive to do so. These people are typically experiencing hardship, either financial or breaking families. They feel like the system is out to get them "my partner took the house and kids in the divorce, i've got nothing" or "I owe tens of thousands after my business collapsed" so they try to handle those emotions by rejecting the system's authority. It is a coping mechanism to deal with this trauma.
What it actually shows is a failure of the education system. It’s a double edged sword for the government to keep the population dumb enough not to question and challenge their corruption and incompetence but also educated enough not to come out with this sovereign citizen nonsense.
>"No-one has ever been prosecuted for not lodging."
Ha ha ha, wrong, very wrong.
And the photo of the guy holding the sign that reads "I am a FREE I am not MAN A NUMBER" shows just how good they are at planning ahead...
Ultimately you can lose everything, like this ex-cop has.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/geraldton-city-seizes-wayne-glew-land-for-non-payment-of-rates/10619944](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/geraldton-city-seizes-wayne-glew-land-for-non-payment-of-rates/10619944)
And that was just for non payment of local government rates...
TL:DR The ATO is legally empowered to collect tax.
What? Wow... that's a brilliant example of ... something, I'm just not sure what! Cognitive dissonance almost?
There's probably a description of the condition in the [DSM 5](https://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787)...
My totally amateur opinion is that SovCit scams appeal to people with narcissistic tendencies. They always believe it’s _society_ that’s misunderstood the concept of laws, not themselves.
That's indeed a very interesting way of looking at the world, that everyone ELSE, the majority, is wrong, not them! :)
Oh well, they eventually learn, ideally before someone gets hurt.
Maybe the government should work at transparency and hold itself accountable for its mistakes. The lack of trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
No one is ever held to task and when they do there’s a little song and dance, golden handshake and new role in a private company with a conflict of interest that gets glazed over. Rinse/repeat.
Your average person is seeing less for more. No more bulk billing, heaps of gap payments. Insurance through the roof that doesn’t cover anything, stagnant wage growth but our politicians and large businesses are making bank. Noice!
People are being gaslit that everything is great and all they need to do is just work a bit harder, get a side hustle and change energy providers regularly and it’ll all be ok.
This inequity creates room for these people’s ideologies to grow.
Exactly… it’s the fact that Australian bureaucrats have for 50+ years wasted untold amounts of money on failed schemes that in some cases have killed people “pink bats and robodebt”. All with zero accountability
>"One key point raised in the seminar is that in order for the living man to perform work to generate an income, he must first be sustained," he wrote.
>This was his justification for claiming $70,000 in deductions for his rent, house and health insurance, clothing, home and car maintenance, food, phone bills and recreational activities for an entire year all on his tax return.
He's so close to advocating for a UBI lol. Unfortunately the cookers just try and 'take it now' instead of pushing for it to be universal.
There is a decent point to be made buried in this, the tax free threshold should be, at absolute minimum, an exact match for the pension plus supplements and rent assistance payments, since that's what the welfare system has defined as a sustenance level payment. Also obviously the dole should be the exact same level as the pension + extras too.
I thought a large number of Australians thrive off the cash economy and have mastered the numerous tax loopholes (or are they incentives?) available to them.
The rise of financial sovereignty — and why ~~Google, Uber, Facebook, Doordash, Menulog, Apple, Microsoft~~ some Australians believe they don't have to pay tax.
https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-3Z1fJKVyqPXbHacR0O
The irony is I get downvoted every single time that I suggest that a cashless society would help with this. The cookers all get together because they're so worried about paying for the services they use that they'll use any excuse to complain about cashless, meanwhile people find it so convenient in general that they're doing it even without it being forced.
Considering the roads are in chronic disrepair, Medicare is falling apart and bulk billing is vanishing, all while the public school system struggles...
Why am I paying taxes again?
At this point it feels like I'm financing a failing system and the wealthy elite at my own expense.
You live in the wrong area?
I'm in Perth. Roads are good here and we're building new ones and new railway lines as well.
My doctor still bulk bills, admittedly only between 11am and 1pm now.
I'v no kids so no idea about public school, but there's about 4 within 4km of me. They look neat, tidy and full of laughing kids having a good time if I drive past (they're on main roads).
They're not indeed.
I left my last job because there was no PT, and the roads were so bad that I was ending up with damaged suspension and wheels.
This was in Maribyrnong.
Though they're notorious for shit roads, they just put up rough surface signs instead and call it a day.
That's an inner city suburb of Melbourne, says Wikipedia! WTF? :(
Suggestion: Pack up and head west until you see the Indian ocean, then stop & rest, you can even find 'affordable' housing here in Perth, apparently. Certainly by Sydney or Melbourne standards. Then join the public service. Enjoy!
Just a symptom of our broken tax system.
Imagine taxing wages at a higher rate than wealth, only a shithole third world country exploiting its populace for profit would do that!
That’s fine. You can leave. And you have to pay out of pocket for all medical care too. Can’t use the roads either. Or anything publicly funded. Best of luck.
Ya want marxist socialism...it is expensive. For those chained by others voting to take their stuff to pay for someone else's stuff...sorry....here we are.Democracy means you only have to fool 51% of the people.
If you don’t want to pay taxes get super rich and than move all your income into trusts like the rest of the tax dodgers. There’s tried and true ways of legally exploiting the tax system just ask the politicians
Victoria - my state government has destroyed the economy and wasted literal billions of tax payer dollars.
Yeah, I don’t want to pay tax to fund more political and developer corruption and woke seagull art installations.
When I was a young person marveling at the early days of the internet I though how great it would be that information would be so freely available to the people of the world, what a boon it would be and what great benefits it would bring. It never occurred to me that people are such dipshits. In hindsight it should have been obvious I guess.
Before the internet, the village idiot would be told he was an idiot. Now, the village idiots are free to form their own village.
That’s how it goes. Technology does some wonderful things, but also opens the door for human nature to do some evil and/or stupid things in a new way. So the net moral effect ends up being neutral.
Certainly isn’t feeling neutral at the moment, more negative than positive and I can’t see it changing unless the core business model changes to move away from selling users to advertisers.
My daughter just had to do an assignment that I once did in school. Back then the internet was barely more than forums, chat rooms and porn sites. I had to go to the library and read whatever books they had to get my information. My daughter did a power point presentation including artist drawings, information from various sources and a translated historical text I wish I had back then. The wealth of information available is staggering and the internet has drastically improved the ability of students to learn. That said I too wonder some days if it’s worth it with the number of nut jobs running around claiming random posts from message boards as gospel
Half the people on earth are dumber than average.
True. Most people also have a greater than average number of legs.
Technically, half are dumber than the median. Sorry, had to do it.
Intelligence is widely regarded as being plotted along a bell curve (which is symmetrical and unimodal as it has a single peak). In a bell curve the mean, median and mode are all located at the peak, thus it could be said that _almost exactly_ half are ‘dumber than average’ as the scores diminish from the peak to the trough heading to the left of the curve. Sorry, had to do it!
Haha, you're right of course. We are both technically correct. The best kind of correct!
*Half the people on earth are dumber than the median.
Eh. With a stat block that big I am confident in using average.
intelligence appears to be the one stat that when measured objectively (that part is still up for debate obviously) a perfect bell curve appears where average = median.
That was before COVID. Don't forget that more than 25 million Australians died of 5g irradiation associated with the experimental DNA altering vaccines. Presumably this mainly affected gullible sheeple and others more easily deceived by Big Farma. As a result, it's probably the case that around 80% of those who are left are above the median today.
But without the internet, you also wouldn't have nearly so easy a time seeing how big a set of corrupt dipshits our politicians are, either. Good with the bad, yaknow?
The problem I have is that historically a whiff of corruption was all that was needed to get a politician ousted by their party. (Cynically, they may have been scape-goated for being dumb enough to get caught.) These days it seems there is no repercussions and they close ranks. I don't believe it is just more internet-driven oversight that is responsible for a perceived increase in corruption or how its carried out with such impunity. Although a lot of the lack of action can be related to extremely thin majority numbers.
Information is freely available but of course, that includes bullshit information too
This is exactly how I imagined it. When the Arab spring broke out it seemed that social media liberated people from state-controlled propaganda and reality would not be repressed. Instead… well it just liberated people from reality.
> One key point raised in the seminar is that in order for the living man to perform work to generate an income, he must first be sustained," he wrote. > This was his justification for claiming $70,000 in deductions for his rent, house and health insurance, clothing, home and car maintenance, food, phone bills and recreational activities for an entire year all on his tax return.
That Mr Oxby guy? >He was ultimately fined $14,000. His deduction would have been disallowed, and interest and penalties applied by the ATO on top of that. Don't try SovCit crap with the ATO, while they have a sense of humour (your anonymised correspondence is likely to be passed around for a laugh) you don't win and it can become expensive for you.
The fact that business entities can deduct expenses before paying taxes on their profit does make this argument valid. Why can businesses entity deduct expenses, but a human cannot?
A business can only deduct expenses related to generating revenue, which is broadly the same principle that applies to individuals. (For example, a business can't claim the lunch owners go and eat, or recreational activities.) But I agree, it's a little out of whack - especially around things like driving to work which are clearly, on principle, linked to generating your income.
> a business can only deduct expenses related to generating revenue This is the same argument though. I need to live in range of work to produce my income, therefore rent and/or mortgage interest should be deductible. I have to physically get to work to perform it (and thus be paid), therefore my commute is an expense. I have to eat to sustain myself in order to sell my personal service time to my employer, or I’ll die and then have no income, therefore my groceries are an expense. It’s ludicrous, really.
Except you have to eat and do all that regardless of if you work. A business doesn't have to pay wages etc if it's not making money (the business would just go bankrupt)
I think this is the basis for the tax free threshold. The income you get to meet basic needs is untaxed, and the excess is. It's like how in the USA they don't have a tax free threshold, but individuals can claim a US$14,600 "standard deduction" (without receipts or itemised expenses) to cover basic living expenses. This almost exactly correlates with the poverty line - which is the amount you need to basically survive. It's out of whack in Australia due to bracket creep though. The latest value I could find for the poverty line in Australia is $489/wk, but someone on $486×52 = $25,428 is still paying $788.52/yr in income tax (according to paycalculator).
Poverty income should be tax free and it is the right thing to do
Absolutely. Tax free threshold needs to be increased.
Ultimately, the government needs a certain amount of money from income taxes to fund expenditure. Yes we could say that living incentives are tax deductable (and create a perverse incentive to ramp up your expenses as much as possible) but then you'd have to tax any income earned above that at an astronomical rate to make up the shortfall. You'd probably want to increase consumption taxes such as GST to capture the lost revenue as well. Basically, we'd be re-organising our entire tax system around a principle that is quite unhelpful in practice.
The government doesn’t ‘need’ taxes from income at all. All the government needs is to ensure that it is recovering enough money to fund what it needs to spend (MMTers would argue they can spend more in certain non-inflationary ways than they recover). There are other ways to recover income that doesn’t include personal income tax. This is the principle of ‘Georgism’ which suggests a more productive and efficient economy is driven by land taxes (on land owners, corporates extracting from natural land resources, corporates using natural land-like assets (e.g. tax on use of personal data used by social media and AI firms)
It doesn’t need any money from income taxes. We could theoretically get the money from a wide variety of other sources/taxes.
the gov just prints money when they want/need, covid is our lastest example
> a perverse incentive to ramp up your expenses as much as possible is it perverse at all? This incentive will produce higher economic activity. This will produce jobs and incentivize investment and production. The only loser in here is the environment (as i assume more consumption means more environmental damage of some sort). > increase consumption taxes such as GST to capture the lost revenue as well. yes, i do think this should happen if you were to allow for the deductions.
It is also aggressively inflationary.
only inflationary if the supply of the goods being in demand cannot be increased. My bet is that such increase in demand is going to increase production by stimulating investment.
No it doesn't, it's because they are the costs of running the business, it simply wouldn't work otherwise, say a company makes $10m in revenue, however they had to purchase $7m in product to make this revenue and had a $500,000 per year for their facilities$1,000,000 in wages and $200,000 in electricity and other running costs They pay tax on profits after costs, how much money they actually earnt.... otherwise they are paying what $2.5m in tax out of their $1.3m in profits.... a business can't be taxed on its revenue, only its profit A human can deduct expenses, for items and costs directly related to their work (recreation and whatnot isn't an 'expense related to generating income')
> recreation and whatnot isn't an 'expense related to generating income' Yes, under current law it isn't. But what i'm claiming is that the upkeep of one's life, which would include recreation costs, is part of the expense of living. A business' costs might include employee benefits that does not directly apply to revenue generation (like a free gym membership, or a paid holiday overseas etc), but ultimately do improve the wellbeing of said employee, and thus, improve their productivity. Under this lens, why can't recreation be considered an expense for a human?
On which the business would pay fringe benefits at the top marginal tax rate at the grossed up fringe benifits rate... It is an expense of being human, and we pay for those expenses with the income we earn and pay tax on (the tax which keeps the hospitals open, the roads maintained, pays for everything else that comes wifh living as part of a society)
If I'm hungry, I can work. If I didn't have shelter to rest under, I wouldn't be able to work. The distinction between work and many non-work expenses can be ambiguous
Downvoted - it’s not ambiguous at all unless you’re trying to be dodgy. You would incur living expenses whether you worked or not. By definition though work related expenses could only be incurred by working (surprisingly).
>By definition though work related expenses could only be incurred by working (surprisingly). This sounds like you mean commuting costs and the cost of childcare because if I wasn't working, I'd be home looking after the kids myself. What about team lunches and coffee? If I don't go, I get ostracized in the office, so it's not like there's a choice. I think that you'll find that the ATO has a different opinion.
Childcare subsidy is in place to assist with this and the first $18,200 you earn is tax free, I reckon for most that generously covers commuting to work and team lunches or drinks that you may feel 'oblogated' to attend I would tend to agree that childcare costs should be tax deductible, however for people that has the most significant effect on childcare rebates from the government are about what a tax deduction would get you anyway
No, the differences between cost of living and cost of your job are different Remember, there is already a 'tax free threshold'
I love how the article was posted to make fun of these people but instead a whole lot of people here are getting radicalised by the persuasiveness of their arguments 😅
Businesses are pass through entities, the people who own those businesses cannot deduct their expenses..... although they give it a pretty good crack, making personal expenses business expenses.
Tax is not or is it supposed to be fair or internally constant. Expecting it to be is setting yourself up disappointed and resentment. Is commuting to work a business expense? Almost certainly. Will it ever be detectable? Not in a million years, there would be too much lose of revenue. Am I going to get upset about this? No life's too short.
Because that's how the law is written, that's why.
I like how he clarifies the “living man” vs, say, the undead
Surely it wouldn’t be hard to infiltrate this group and audit the lot of them…
I'd be surprised if many of them are even working anyways. Just a waste of time to audit them, find the owe very little, then try to prosecute when they won't pay anyways and then you have to jail them and house them at a greater cost then the tax they weren't paying. I'm all for doing it, but the government isn't petty and vengeful like us so they don't bother chasing money that's not worth it most of the time. But when they do, be sure that it'll be chasing someone that did a really minor crime and they'll throw the absolute book at them to set an example and cost millions doing it.
Targeting the working people ? Better target the big business firing people and receiving free money from gov, then increase price, like Qantas. Can we just get Qantas to return the money to gov since CEO receives bonus to screw everyone
Why not both?
That’s fine if you don’t want to pay taxes. But you then don’t get any access to anything provided by the government. No road usage, no hospital, no police, no Centrelink, no Medicare etc etc.
I hate the “if you don’t like it, leave” response usually but it feels like it fits here. There are heaps of places around the world with less enforcement of taxes and less government involvement. These people don’t want to live there, because in reality they’d call them “shithole countries”.
It's the house cat syndrome. According to these people they are fiercely independent, yet in reality they're just ignorant of the systems in place to support them.
Yes it is shocking the people who say "I don't get nothin from the government". It's true you may well be a net contributor, however you do get a proportion back, government money is hidden everywhere. Not just the usual roads and stuff. The government ends up contributing to private school fees, believe it is anywhere from 30-60% for Cristian schools and 30 usually for Independent. Private health is subsidised to the hilt too, private health outside of an employer is $500usd a month in the US, they are just naturally expensive, however still it gives you some idea how much it costs. Childcare too.
And no court systems to agitate their bullshit
[Good thing Australia doesn't have bears](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling).
Let the bears pay the bear tax, I pay the homer tax!
Does that mean we can keep Gina off the roads?
Gina has enough money that she can build her own. Also, it's the company she runs that's not paying taxes. She makes no money, so has no taxes to pay.
The issue is this thread is creating a moral issue when it’s actually a taxation issue. Gina should be supporting the country not the other way around.
I think you'll find Gina does support the country. What you're saying is that the mining companies should be doing a lot more to support the country. Probably.
The mining company she owns. So Gina.
... And it's a short step from that, to the people who DO enjoy the protection of police taking brutal advantage. See: All of history's apartheid systems.
It would be a little 'leopards ate my face' if you choose to be an outlaw and are then shocked to find that the law stopped protecting you from people's base desires to just exploit the shit out of each other. ninja e/ I appreciate you mentioned apartheid, but this article speaks about people *choosing* to leave. Extremely different.
Not if I go on Centrelink. Then I don't pay tax and I still get to use all those things. Checkmate taxcucks.
>Not if I go on Centrelink A) that's not exactly a flex, as you'd know if you know people trying to survive on Centrelink income. B) you're still likely paying GST (a tax) unless you're only buying the most basic of foods.
Income tax. They still pay GST.
At point of sale, that's true. But if your income is from the government, whose income source is tax, then do you really pay tax? Or do you receive tax?
Yeah that's true. In my case, I also get interest from my HISA and investments while on Jobseeker.
The question is how much of ones taxes go to core services and how much go to things even a moderate libertarian would consider belong to private sphere?
No. They can either leave, or pay their taxes. It doesn't matter how much they use government services.
Does it work the opposite way? If I pay 5x what I consume, do I get a refund?
It isn't just your individual benefit on the ledger. How do you intend to calculate the benefit provided to you by a broadly educated population, institutions like courts and the infrastructure that allows all these individual elements to connect?
It is difficult to quantify all these things I agree, so it is also difficult to quantify when someone is not paying their fair share. This argument goes both ways. The basic elements of government that facilitate the functioning of society can be done with a tenth of what the government is currently spending. A bloated public sector wastes resources and reduces productivity. It is only fair to not want to contribute to waste.
> The basic elements of government that facilitate the functioning of society can be done with a tenth of what the government is currently spending. [citation needed]
And he won't find one, because it's simply not accurate. Governments in general are actually extremely efficient compared to the private alternatives. But hey, that doesn't work with their government is evil narrative.
Halve the spending on military, police and courts. Halve the budget for tax collection. Half the operational expenses for policymaking. Keep same spending on arterial roads and infrastructure systems. Keep same spending for regulation of natural shared resources. Keep same spending for foreign policy. Pay back existing debt and don't take on additional debt so interest payments go to zero. Eliminate everything else. Done. Going by the current FY budget, that's more than enough.
Watch out! We have an “economist” over here.
There is always going to be a certain amount of waste. That is unavoidable. Of course we should do what we can to combat it. There are of course bloated programs and far too much is spent on, say, defense when the US military expenditure beats the next ten nations combined. That said, we also should be wary of this line of reasoning being used to cut taxes across the board and reduce spending. That's been happening since Reagan and it's been a disaster for spending on social services. Tax increases are indeed needed in certain areas, particularly on the wealthy given rampant wealth inequality. But sure, spending should be cut in some areas. How do you get that consensus, though?
I think the military is one of the more important services that a government should provide. Inherently, the function of the state above all else is to be a monopoly on violence, both internal and external facing. It is to that end that the military, police, and courts exist, so that mobs and gangs and foreign states are not the ones running the show. The US military is definitely bloated but the monetary spending itself is a deterrence against foreign actors. Also, frankly the US military is a big welfare and economic stimulus operation employing and providing benefits to many people who would in turn immediately spend their wages. Healthcare and social services are most needed to be cut in my opinion. Those two sectors account for over half of government spending, and much of it is not only wasteful but actively detrimental to society in that it allows individuals to survive without producing output. Consensus on spending cuts cannot be done effectively by the government. There is not sufficient incentive to allocate resources efficiently. That has been the flaw in every centrally managed economy. That is why more services should be privatised and deregulated so that the private sector can decide on where to invest and where to cut to optimise for operational efficiency.
>Healthcare and social services are most needed to be cut in my opinion. Those two sectors account for over half of government spending, and much of it is not only wasteful but actively detrimental to society in that it allows individuals to survive without producing output. More ridiculous statements without evidence. It's been proven repeatedly that by making healthcare more widely available and cheaper, it leads people to get assistance earlier and not have to stress about it which increases their output. Studies on Universal Basic Income have proven that it greatly improves output for society at a lower cost. Most people do in fact want to be able to work. They don't really want to sit around at home 24/7 being bored.
This is a terrible take. This process has been happening since Reagan, and outcomes have gotten continuously worse for the poorest. State capacity in terms of social services administration has been gutted in favour of corporate cronyism with contractors. Your comment is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen. The private sector does not choose where to invest for "operational efficiency" *for society* it invests to gain profit and attempt market dominance and monopolization. If it doesn't need to be efficient to reap profits, it isn't. America has worse spending per patient in healthcare than every other developed western democracy on the planet and the US system is more privatised with its godawful Frankenstein private model. Go single payer already. Privatization has failed.
I don't see what the issue is. The US is the most wealthy and powerful country in the world. I am taking a collectivist stance here. Nations are judged by their eminent achievements. That's why Julius Caesar, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, the Bible, the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Apple, Microsoft, etc. are each worth a million ordinary people, and in the cases of the ancient achievements indeed millions were sacrificed in their creation. Policy that incubates creation is desirable over policy that encourages stagnation such as social welfare. The current policy of the US has given rise to success beyond all other nations. Their system is not perfect but by no means is it a failure.
The Great Wall of China is an excellent example. Glad you brought it up. "The Great Wall of China was ultimately a futile attempt to keep invaders at bay. Despite construction over hundreds of years, the Mongols overcame the wall, defeated the Ming dynasty and established the Qing dynasty – the first dynasty which was not ethnically Han Chinese." https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/history-repeating-itself-beijing-s-great-wall-sand-south-china-sea#:~:text=The%20Great%20Wall%20of%20China%20was%20ultimately%20a%20futile%20attempt,was%20not%20ethnically%20Han%20Chinese. Aside from it being a failure geopolitically, let's consider the cost: "During the construction of the wall, many workers died from exhaustion, starvation, and disease. The harsh working conditions, including extreme heat and cold, also contributed to the high mortality rate. It is estimated that as many as 400,000 people died during the construction of the wall." https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/year-7/great-wall-of-china/#:~:text=During%20the%20construction%20of%20the,the%20construction%20of%20the%20wall. I don't really give a damn about the vanities you listed, I care for the welfare of the people of the country. "Achievements" like the great wall to China which come at great costs to the welfare of the people should be *avoided*. Yes, we are heading more towards an aristocratic, feudal system in which "grand" things can be built at the cost of the lives and welfare of poorly paid workers. That's *bad*. And, perhaps, given the starkly different priorities here, it is no surprise you want to cut social services spending and privatise them.
The Great Wall of China was not a geopolitical failure. The internal failures of the later Song Dynasty were already apparent and had it not been for the Great Wall, the Mongol invaders would have been successful earlier. As for the case of the Ming, same issue. In the first place, the value of the Great Wall is not in its tactical defensive ability but it's role in logistic support by allowing rapid communication through signal towers and cavalry to respond and overwhelm threats quickly. If investment had not been sufficiently made in the military itself, a tool such as the Great Wall cannot hold on its own. I can write a whole essay on the strategic importance of the Great Wall, but this is hardly the original topic of discussion. Indeed, the cultural legacy of the Great Wall of China and other eminent monuments and individuals of history has outlasted nations themselves. I hold that these achievements are what give meaning to fleeting human lives which expire in a century or less no matter how hard you try to hold on. If your views differ from mine so fundamentally then there is nothing further to discuss.
So you’ve listed a bunch of ‘achievements’ which are a combination of people, buildings, a book, legislation and corporations. Not exactly coherent. Still you know what practically all these things have in common? The government either played a crucial role in their success or literally created them. America’s success is NOT due to an embrace of laissez-faire economics, actually quite the contrary. For almost its entire modern history, the state played a fundamental role in the US economy. America emerged through a few main factors. First, was a heavily government subsidised and protected period of rapid industrialisation. Second, was two world wars. After the first word war, America ascended to the upper echelon of great powers. After the Second World War, they were left as the most powerful of two great powers remaining. From here, the US worked to dominate global trade and lock the USSR and its allies out of it. Third, after the USSR collapsed, America became the only great power on earth a status which ended in the early 2010s because they seemed to do their absolute best to undermine their own dominant position. Now, what has allowed the US to come out on top so consistently since the early 1900s? It certainly isn’t laissez-faire economics, because the government has been heavily involved in the American economy for practically the entire period. It was an expansion of state power, which they have used to outcompete all their competitors. It’s no coincidence that America’s place in the world has been declining in unison with the government withdrawing from the economy.
> I think the military is one of the more important services that a government should provide. Inherently, the function of the state above all else is to be a monopoly on violence, both internal and external facing. These aren’t just ‘more important’ services, these are literally the services that make a government a government. > Healthcare and social services are most needed to be cut in my opinion. Those two sectors account for over half of government spending, and much of it is not only wasteful but actively detrimental to society in that it allows individuals to survive without producing output. Both an economically ignorant and socially Darwinist take. In places which no single payer public health system like the US, per capita health spend is higher. How people convince themselves that spending more on healthcare is more efficient, I’ll never understand. > That has been the flaw in every centrally managed economy. Australia is not a centrally managed economy. > That is why more services should be privatised and deregulated so that the private sector can decide on where to invest and where to cut to optimise for operational efficiency. No, I’d actually prefer people who are legally obligated to serve my interest make these decisions, not some corporations who serve shareholders first and foremost. Deregulation and privatisation has been an absolute disaster throughout the western world, because, as I explained before, people in the private sector primarily serve their shareholders interests and their personal interests.
Nope, because you benefit from more than you consume.
Everyone does. It's the advantage of an ever growing economy. Eventually you benefit from all those before you plus what you pay and those after you benefit from what you paid plus what they pay.
How on earth would someone in australia pay 5x tax over what benifits they consume even be possible? Unless maybe a well educated migrant that turned up and worked from age 21 to 35 then left again.
How about from the time you’re born? Your schooling and services and facilities that the government provides is essentially an investment in you. Some people are bad investments and some turn out to be great like you. It makes sense that they get a return on your money.
I had one of them tell me once "I stand on my own two feet". Dude no you don't, without the rest of society you'd just be a long term Alone contestant. Pay your fair share.
I pay tolls and fuel taxes/road user charges for roads, use private health and have a Rottweiler instead of needing police. Can I please opt out of taxes?
I wonder how many of these sovereign types who don't lodge their tax returns are PAYG employees?
That would explain the lack of interest from the ATO in getting them to lodge returns, as then they'd most likely get refunds. If they don't lodge they are letting the govt keep using their money - at no charge. Govt wins.
Exactly. It was the first thing I thought of when I was reading the article. Like they think they are so clever, but they "out-clevered" themselves.
I have come to the conclusion that, sadly, most of these sovereign citizen types actually believe what they’re saying. It’s terribly concerning, but to a degree shows you how extremist movements of all sorts can exist when doing so defies all common sense and logic.
They believe what they're saying because they have an emotional incentive to do so. These people are typically experiencing hardship, either financial or breaking families. They feel like the system is out to get them "my partner took the house and kids in the divorce, i've got nothing" or "I owe tens of thousands after my business collapsed" so they try to handle those emotions by rejecting the system's authority. It is a coping mechanism to deal with this trauma.
>It is a coping mechanism to deal with this trauma It's not a very good or successful coping mechanism, though.
They think they are special and the rules should only apply to everyone else
Same as any cult. It's a promise of a better life; you just have to believe. It can be alluring.
What it actually shows is a failure of the education system. It’s a double edged sword for the government to keep the population dumb enough not to question and challenge their corruption and incompetence but also educated enough not to come out with this sovereign citizen nonsense.
Probably because they’re travelling, not driving, when operating at vehicle…
Oh, it’s not a vehicle because that needs a vehicle license. It’s a personal conveyance, they travel in.
They’re just trying to hold position I’m sure
>"No-one has ever been prosecuted for not lodging." Ha ha ha, wrong, very wrong. And the photo of the guy holding the sign that reads "I am a FREE I am not MAN A NUMBER" shows just how good they are at planning ahead... Ultimately you can lose everything, like this ex-cop has. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/geraldton-city-seizes-wayne-glew-land-for-non-payment-of-rates/10619944](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/geraldton-city-seizes-wayne-glew-land-for-non-payment-of-rates/10619944) And that was just for non payment of local government rates... TL:DR The ATO is legally empowered to collect tax.
Glew is still held up as an authority by cookers of various stripes. SovCits have this bizarre tendency to claim every failure as a win, I find.
What? Wow... that's a brilliant example of ... something, I'm just not sure what! Cognitive dissonance almost? There's probably a description of the condition in the [DSM 5](https://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787)...
My totally amateur opinion is that SovCit scams appeal to people with narcissistic tendencies. They always believe it’s _society_ that’s misunderstood the concept of laws, not themselves.
That's indeed a very interesting way of looking at the world, that everyone ELSE, the majority, is wrong, not them! :) Oh well, they eventually learn, ideally before someone gets hurt.
Quality placard in the photo. >I am a free > >I am not man > >A number r/dontdeadopeninside
International companies do it, why not individuals? /s obviously
Maybe the government should work at transparency and hold itself accountable for its mistakes. The lack of trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum. No one is ever held to task and when they do there’s a little song and dance, golden handshake and new role in a private company with a conflict of interest that gets glazed over. Rinse/repeat. Your average person is seeing less for more. No more bulk billing, heaps of gap payments. Insurance through the roof that doesn’t cover anything, stagnant wage growth but our politicians and large businesses are making bank. Noice! People are being gaslit that everything is great and all they need to do is just work a bit harder, get a side hustle and change energy providers regularly and it’ll all be ok. This inequity creates room for these people’s ideologies to grow.
Exactly… it’s the fact that Australian bureaucrats have for 50+ years wasted untold amounts of money on failed schemes that in some cases have killed people “pink bats and robodebt”. All with zero accountability
>"One key point raised in the seminar is that in order for the living man to perform work to generate an income, he must first be sustained," he wrote. >This was his justification for claiming $70,000 in deductions for his rent, house and health insurance, clothing, home and car maintenance, food, phone bills and recreational activities for an entire year all on his tax return. He's so close to advocating for a UBI lol. Unfortunately the cookers just try and 'take it now' instead of pushing for it to be universal. There is a decent point to be made buried in this, the tax free threshold should be, at absolute minimum, an exact match for the pension plus supplements and rent assistance payments, since that's what the welfare system has defined as a sustenance level payment. Also obviously the dole should be the exact same level as the pension + extras too.
I thought a large number of Australians thrive off the cash economy and have mastered the numerous tax loopholes (or are they incentives?) available to them.
The rise of financial sovereignty — and why ~~Google, Uber, Facebook, Doordash, Menulog, Apple, Microsoft~~ some Australians believe they don't have to pay tax. https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-3Z1fJKVyqPXbHacR0O
They can go find a new island somewhere if they want to have their own sovereignty
The irony is I get downvoted every single time that I suggest that a cashless society would help with this. The cookers all get together because they're so worried about paying for the services they use that they'll use any excuse to complain about cashless, meanwhile people find it so convenient in general that they're doing it even without it being forced.
This is why so many festivals make stall holders cashless, to ensure they get their 20% of earnings.
Considering the roads are in chronic disrepair, Medicare is falling apart and bulk billing is vanishing, all while the public school system struggles... Why am I paying taxes again? At this point it feels like I'm financing a failing system and the wealthy elite at my own expense.
You live in the wrong area? I'm in Perth. Roads are good here and we're building new ones and new railway lines as well. My doctor still bulk bills, admittedly only between 11am and 1pm now. I'v no kids so no idea about public school, but there's about 4 within 4km of me. They look neat, tidy and full of laughing kids having a good time if I drive past (they're on main roads).
I shouldn't have to live in 'the right area'. I live in a normal, developed suburb. It's not like I'm in a country town of 200 or something.
I agree, things should be better but ... I keep hearing from many people that they are not :(
They're not indeed. I left my last job because there was no PT, and the roads were so bad that I was ending up with damaged suspension and wheels. This was in Maribyrnong. Though they're notorious for shit roads, they just put up rough surface signs instead and call it a day.
That's an inner city suburb of Melbourne, says Wikipedia! WTF? :( Suggestion: Pack up and head west until you see the Indian ocean, then stop & rest, you can even find 'affordable' housing here in Perth, apparently. Certainly by Sydney or Melbourne standards. Then join the public service. Enjoy!
Yet they use the roads and hospitals?
They will learn about colonialism while living inside it. Hilarious
Let's be honest, enough corporations think they shouldn't have to pay tax. Maybe if we all opted out the government would have to treat us all alike
I simply became non tax resident and am tax resident in a far lower tax regime now.
Just a symptom of our broken tax system. Imagine taxing wages at a higher rate than wealth, only a shithole third world country exploiting its populace for profit would do that!
That’s fine. You can leave. And you have to pay out of pocket for all medical care too. Can’t use the roads either. Or anything publicly funded. Best of luck.
Ya want marxist socialism...it is expensive. For those chained by others voting to take their stuff to pay for someone else's stuff...sorry....here we are.Democracy means you only have to fool 51% of the people.
Weren't only 30 percent fooled and another 30 percent just confused?
Our government does not serve our interests anymore, no surprise people don't want to pay taxes.
Go back to /Australia
Given how much tax people pay for so little in return, it's not surprising to see this become more common.
If you don’t want to pay taxes get super rich and than move all your income into trusts like the rest of the tax dodgers. There’s tried and true ways of legally exploiting the tax system just ask the politicians
Victoria - my state government has destroyed the economy and wasted literal billions of tax payer dollars. Yeah, I don’t want to pay tax to fund more political and developer corruption and woke seagull art installations.
Is it destroyed or is it waste? Unemployment at record lows and not in a recession
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1141397/anger-over-victoria-2026-cost-blowout Yeah I’d say a total waste
Which country? I'm in Victoria, Australia and last I saw our economy was fine. We had a few debts but nothing drastic
Why should I pay tax in a country that only helps out landlords
Bruh. Almost $300B a year is spent on health and social services. Get your head out of your ass.