Submission to the Treasury
Review of Australia's Future Tax System (AFTS)

17 October 2008
PDF 180kb

Executive Summary

The G100 believes that Australia’s Tax System should be visionary, tailored to cater to its comparative advantages (e.g. resources, agriculture, services) and reflect its economic features and demographics – namely that Australia is a small capital-attracting economy with a relatively small and ageing population.

As a result, the Tax System should encourage productivity growth by providing a business and personal tax environment that is conducive to attracting investment in globally competitive capital resources and developing high value adding labour skills.

We believe that such an environment should be based on the following three key principles:

1. International Competitiveness;
2. Simplicity and Certainty; and
3. Robust Governance of ATO and alignment with Investment Policy Objectives.

The reasons why we believe these principles are important to improving our tax regime and a set of accompanying recommendations relating to each principle are set out in the detailed submission. We also set out in the Timing Appendix a broad timeframe for implementing these recommendations.