Australia’s light duty vehicle fleet is among the least fuel efficient in the world, using 24% more fuel per kilometre travelled than the UK. If the UK’s modest standards could be met here, Australian drivers would save $13 billion a year in fuel costs and overall transport emissions would be 17% lower.

Australians want more public services that will require more government revenue. This paper summarises Australia’s tax system, its international context, and principles to guide its reform.

Expanded ECEC services would provide a badly-needed boost to Australia’s economic recovery from COVID-19.

The stage 3 tax cuts will give occupations like CEOs of large corporations, surgeons, and federal politicians a $9,075 a year tax cut. While aged care workers, hairdressers, and café workers will get nothing. When the LMITO ends teachers, nurses and chefs will pay $1080 more in tax.

The stage 3 tax cuts will go mainly to male, high income taxpayers. Half will go to the top 10%, 72 per cent going to the top 20 per cent while the bottom half get only five per cent and the bottom 20 per cent get nothing. Men will get twice as much of the

An electorate analysis of the Federal Government’s current plan to scrap the LMITO (Low and Middle Income Tax Offset) after 2021-22, shows most taxpayers will be worse off when the legislated Stage 3 tax cuts to high income earners comes into effect in 2024-25. Key Findings: Scrapping the LMITO will see 90% of taxpayers pay

How we tax has a big impact on our society. The decision of what and how much to tax is important. This paper provides policy makers with five principles to evaluate our taxation choices.

Budget policy has traditionally advantaged men over women. This paper makes seven recommendations on how to improve women’s economic security and use the budget as a tool to reduce gender inequality.

Modelling from the Centre for Social Research and Methods on income, wealth and gender distribution of negative gearing, CGT discount, super tax concessions and excess franking credits shows that these tax concessions overwhelmingly benefit high-income, high-wealth men.

In March 2020, the Government lifted almost half a million Australians (470,000) out of poverty, including 75,000 children, by introducing the coronavirus supplement worth $550 per fortnight.

A study of 33 OECD countries shows that Australia could substantially lift its unemployment payments without any meaningful disincentives for working. The Government has argued that Australia’s internationally low unemployment payments are needed, in part as an incentive to encourage the unemployment to look for and accept work. This briefing note tests the Government’s theory

Bringing forward stage 2 of the tax cuts is ineffective stimulus. Up to 12 times as many jobs could be created if an equivalent amount of money was spent on labour intensive industries.

It has been claimed that higher levels of taxation weaken the economy but a comparative study of 188 economies shows that higher levels of taxation are correlated with higher average income. The positive correlation also exists with other measures of economic wellbeing. Please note: this report was updated on 8th December 2020, correcting an error

The benefit from bringing forward personal income tax cuts would mostly go to high income men. Despite recession job losses affecting women more than men, $2.19–$2.28 of the tax cut will go to men for every $1 that goes to women.

Bringing forward personal income tax cuts would see more than 50% of benefits go to the highest 10% of income earners and 79%-91% of benefits to the top 20% of earners. Just 3%-4% of the benefit would go to the lower half of all income earners. High income earners would save some or all of

The Australia Institute modelled the impacts that removing the coronavirus supplement would have on the number of people in poverty. The national results and an explanation of the modelling are available in Poverty in the age of coronavirus. State specific figures can be found in the following reports: Poverty in the age of coronavirus –

Removing the coronavirus supplement in September will push over 600,000 people into poverty including 120,000 children and half a million people who rent or have a mortgage. This will have a profound impact on the lives of many children for the rest of their lives and significantly impact housing and banking in Australia.

The provision of free childcare provides the rarest of economic policy opportunities – it’s both an effective form of fiscal stimulus in the short term and has the capacity to boost the long-term participation rate and, in turn, the long run rate of economic growth.

If the Australian economy shrinks by 10 percent in the first half of 2020 it will likely take at least 21 months before Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reaches the levels achieved in the December quarter of 2019. Australia has never experienced such a deep and long-lasting reduction in the level of its national income. In

The economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic requires fast, large, effective and well targeted fiscal stimulus. While the size of the federal government’s initial three spending packages is appropriate as an initial response, both the shape of that response and the design of future spending measures need to be carefully evaluated. While the

The economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic requires fast, large, effective and well targeted fiscal stimulus. While the size of the government’s initial three spending packages is appropriate as an initial response, both the shape of that response and the design of future spending measures need to be carefully evaluated. This paper argues

The final stage of the Morrison Government’s unlegislated income tax plan, stage 3(a) will, over the five years after it is introduced in 2024-25, deliver a $33 billion benefit to those earning more than $180,000, according to a new distributional analysis from The Australia Institute’s senior economist Matt Grudnoff. The Morrison Government is yet to