Spender to hold own tax summit – wants more than a dusty document

The MP for one of the richest electorates in the country will bring together some of the best tax minds in the country for her own summit this week, saying voters want a tax system that will pay for government services and help grow the economy.

Sydney-based teal independent Allegra Spender will have some of the most prominent names in tax at her summit on Friday that she plans to be the starting point for a tax green paper and a community-wide discussion including businesses and unions.

Independent MP for Wentworth Allegra Spender will hold her own tax roundtable.Credit:James Brickwood

Among those attending the summit will be former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, former Grattan Institute executive director John Daley, the director of ANU’s Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Bob Breunig, the head of the Corporate Tax Association, Michelle de Niese, Centre for Independent Studies senior fellow Robert Carling and current Grattan CEO Danielle Wood.

Spender said it was clear the ability of the parliament to debate the nation’s tax and spending needs had been “wedged” by political fighting between the major parties for more than a decade.

She told this masthead that rather than a piecemeal approach to tax, the parliament needed to look at how the entire tax system worked, how it supported government spending and whether it was holding back innovation and economic growth.

“The major parties haven’t had a civilised discussion about the tax system and the way that the government raises revenue,” she said.

“I’m looking for something much more than the piecemeal approach that we’ve seen. This is a practical approach to tax reform.

“I’m looking for a final report that is going to do more than sit in a box gathering dust like other reports on tax.”

Earlier this month, Henry used an address to tax experts to warn the Australian tax system was now in a “parlous state”.

The man who headed the last full review of the tax system, which reported to the Rudd government in 2010, said the country needed to find improved ways to raise the revenue required to provide the goods and services demanded by the public.

Grattan Institute chief executive Danielle Wood is one of the experts to attend a tax summit organised by teal independent Allegra Spender this week.Credit:Eamon Gallagher

“It is not capable of raising sufficient revenue to fund the activities of government. Certainly not today. Far less at any time in the future,” he told The Tax Institute.

Apart from tax experts, members of the parliament, including crossbench MPs, will attend the one-day discussion, which will primarily focus on the tax and economic growth issues facing the country by 2035.

A green paper would come out of the roundtable, which would then act as the basis for a series of public roundtable discussions that would include representatives from different parts of the economy. These would include the business sector, resources, community organisations and the union movement.

Spender said the recent debate about the government’s plans to reduce the concessional tax rate on superannuation balances of more than $3 million had highlighted the demand from her own community in the seat of Wentworth, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, for a better debate about tax.

She said many of her constituents could understand the government’s superannuation proposals but had legitimate questions about how it would operate, its treatment of capital gains and whether the $3 million threshold should be indexed to inflation.

“People are also saying that they can see the argument for changes to superannuation, but then ask why isn’t there a super profits tax on coal and gas,” Spender said.

“They want to see a tax system that is calibrated to cover the increasing costs that the budget is going to carry, but that is also going to help drive growth and innovation.”

Spender said the tax system in its current shape would not be able to deal with the challenges that were likely to emerge over the next decade, including the level of debt now carried by the federal government, the demand for extra services such as health and the cost of dealing with climate change.

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