Re: State Rail - No, State Joke. [NSW]

["Bradley Torr" <truenorth@one.net.au.SPAMTRAP>]

Tezza <tezza2000@dingoblue.net.au> wrote in article
<3b166381$0$25500$7f31c96c@news01.syd.optusnet.com.au>...

> | a Public
> | Transport Tax to residents within the 40-odd Metropolitan Sydney
boroughs?
> 
> And collect it how?

The same way the State Government (and other governments) collect any other
tax - send out a bill to residents - tack on a charge to vehicle
registrations within metropolitan Sydney councils - make residents file a
tax return like with Federal taxes - ad a 2% sales tax to retail goods sold
within the County of Cumberland - it's not that difficult! Except we have a
very federalist High Court which for whatever reason likes to take away
powers from the States and give them to the Commonwealth.. viz. the
decision that made it illegal for States to collect excise on beer, petrol
and cigarettes.

In America, it's not unusual for people to have to pay taxes to many
different levels of government. Apart from the annual income tax return to
the federal Internal Revenue Service, there's - state income taxes, state
sales taxes, county taxes, municipal property rates, school district taxes,
transit district taxes, township taxes, etc. etc. ad nauseum! Australia has
one of the most centralised taxation systems in the world - good in the
sense that we only have to file one tax return, bad in that the lower
levels of government are almost entirely dependent on higher levels of
government for their funding, and permission to levy taxes and set the
rates thereof.

> | At least it's not company tax - from 49% to 30% in a little over a
decade!
> 
> And still the bastards sponge off the workers. Payroll tax is about the
only
> way they get *any* tax out of most companies.

But, don't you know Tezza, 'trickle down' economics is good! It really does
work! The theory goes like this - if you lower taxes for corporations and
encourage them to invest by lowering taxes in a given jurisdiction, allow
them to maintain maximum profits, the rich will get richer, and will employ
more people, and there will be more pay packets in the community to buy
goods from corporations, who will get richer again, and will employ more
people, etc. etc. If the rich are allowed to stay rich, their prosperity
will trickle down to us lowly peons. Or, that's what the economic
rationalist ideologues say.

Or, of course, the rich will just get richer and hoard their money and sit
on their massive profits and actually shed workers so they can make more
money..... but don't tell the current powers-that-be that! And if you
privatise the railways, market forces will ensure that service levels are
maintained because it's in the interest of the owners to provide the
highest possible levels of service! And pigs may develop wings and engage
in aeronautical hobbies!

John Maynard Keynes, where art thou?

Regards
BT