The economic impact and efficiency of state and federal taxes in Australia CoPS Working Paper No. G-289, April 2019 Jason Nassios, John Madden, James Giesecke, Janine Dixon, Nhi Tran, Peter Dixon, Maureen Rimmer and Philip Adams (Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University) And John Freebairn (Ritchie Chair of Economics, University of Melbourne) ISSN 1 031 9034 ISBN 978-1-921654-98-5 The Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS), incorporating the IMPACT project, is a research centre at Victoria University devoted to quantitative analysis of issues relevant to economic policy. Address: Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, Victoria, 8001 home page: www.vu.edu.au/CoPS/ email:
[email protected] Telephone +61 3 9919 1877 Economic impact of state and federal taxes in Australia Abstract The Henry Review of Australia’s Future Tax System (2009), made several recommendations to promote resilience, fairness, and prosperity via tax reform. Some of the key reforms suggested include a reduction in Australia’s federally-imposed corporate income tax rate from 30 to 25 per cent; and the removal of property transfer duties levied by state governments. The review by Henry et al. (2009) utilised a long-run, comparative static computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Australian economy to study the tax system. Implicit within this framework is a single layer of government. In reality, Australia’s state government levied tax rates differ across the eight states and territories; some, such as state land tax, health insurance and life insurance levies, are applied in a subset of states and territories only.