Goods and services tax

Good morning.

Talking about petrol places, what gets missed is that There's an excise on petrol, there's a GST on petrol.

They're

not supposed to have two taxes on the same thing.

And the other thing is, with the excise and that, is that in fact, the price of oil going up in the barrel, the actual price of petrol itself goes up.

So the federal government is reaping even more from the excise and the GST.

So why don't they reduce it

to

When you go and pay for something, what you go and pay is the full cost.

That's what happened when GST came in.

Pricing had to include GST in the price.

Australia is pretty good like that.

Generally, the price is the price.

That's the sum total of it.

And why would they, Gary? You think about the GST they're collecting now.

You know, in 90 million litres a day, back in March, they were collecting about 13.5 billion in GST.

Well, today, they're collecting 27 billion a day

in GST.

So...

Their government says they can't help.

And while we've got an election special coming up in November, we're keen to do a what's happening here and now as we're approaching sort of the end of September and looking at the state of Victoria today.

We're then going to take a step up into the GST and the Commonwealth Grants Commission, which has made news recently over some of the events with WA and the GST top-up.

And we're going to dive into what the GST is and does and where it's come from, what the Commonwealth Grants Commission does with the money and carves it up, and what are the concerns on both the East, Central and Western states for the GST carve-up.

And then rounding out today, we're diving into a country that has a long connection to Australia, but often not talked about.

And, you know, as we like to do in the pub test, we like to dive into a country you probably haven't thought about this week, but probably should.

But onto, as I said, we wanted to have a bit of a lighter spin on Victorian politics.

We will dive into it in a little bit closer to the election.

But the other topical issue at the moment, extending from regional, is this weird organisation called the Commonwealth Grants Commission and this little tax we have in Australia, which all of us pay, called the GST or the Goods and Services Tax.

Unfortunately, I'd put it down to government.

We had an off-air caller ask the question, instead of putting up interest rates, why don't they look at increasing GST? Is that a lever that could be pulled? And are there other levers that can be pulled, Shane, in terms of bringing down inflation? Or is interest rates and the cash rate the easiest and most effective?

Well, there certainly are other levers.

And in an ideal world, we would use those other levers.

Now it's going to go in the next election.

So it doesn't want to.

cut spending or raise taxes, which you'd have to do with the GST.

So those other means just don't get used.

He's an economist.

And so him and I and some of the others have been talking about the Productivity Commission's report on the GST report.

distribution and even Solis Lake says that it's the most stupid thing he's ever seen so you know that's a conversation that affects federation because in Victoria we can have conversations about taxing this that and the other but essentially it's the system seems to be a bit broken and the only way that states can raise money is through the assets that they have and not be anti-competitive with the other states.

So, for example, if you wanted to have a sugar tax, which I think would be a good thing to stop people, not to the point where they're going to cause a black market issue, but, you know...

Well, you can't because that'll affect the trade of Coca-Cola in other states.

So you can put a levy on it.

It's really quite complicated, but it's not obvious to people because we complain about our taxes going up, but it's because a distribution of GST probably needs a bit of a rethink because everyone wants... more affordable housing, more affordable education and health.

So to bring it into the business community that we have for In Good Company, obviously business and the local economy is something that you're quite passionate about.

So let's take a packet of cigarettes in Australia that costs $43 for a popular packet of cigarettes.

$4.30 is GST, goods and services tax.

$30.60 is tobacco excise on a $43 packet of cigarettes.

$30 is the tobacco excise that you have to pay to the government straight away.