Since the early 1990s the issue of fiscal transparency has attracted increasing attention from international institutions, governments, and NGO's concerned with budgets and fiscal policy reform. This Article offers a critical analysis of the meaning and purposes of fiscal transparency in light...

This report aims to provide an accessible source of information about tax expenditure reporting, including definitions, explanations of different approaches to measurement and calculation, and examples and analysis of country experiences. Politicians, journalists, think tanks and researchers,...

This Working Paper traces the discursive history of the principles of benefit and legitimacy of taxation from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Drawing on the work of scholars from Adam Smith through Richard Musgrave to public choice theorists, it is observed that successful tax...

The Australian Government proposes to reduce the company tax rate from 30 to 25 per cent. However, there are widespread concerns that the fiscal cost is not affordable. This paper considers alternative reforms of corporate taxation that could fund a corporate tax rate cut. We address key...

Australian law provides an exemption from tax for benefits paid to dependants on the death of a member of a superannuation fund. The federal government recently amended the law to recognise people in an 'interdependency relationship' as dependants for the purpose of this exemption. In contrast...

Tax reform is deeply political. There is now a significant body of political and economic research by political scientists and sociologists, concerning fiscal politics or sociology, in particular addressing taxation in democracies. At the same time, we take for granted, nowadays, that the...

Australia's retirement income system combines private and public provision for old age. Retirees rely on private (but highly regulated) superannuation saving that attracts large tax concessions; a public, means-tested age pension; home ownership; and other private savings. Despite recent changes...

In 2015, Australia's Commonwealth income tax reached its first century. The Income Tax Assessment Act No. 34 of 1915 and accompanying Income Tax Act No. 41 of 1915 were assented to on 13 September 1915, enacted “by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, the Senate, and the House of Representatives...