Five Reflections on the RBT's Vision for the Business Tax Base

Abstract:     
This essay is about the process and execution of tax reform. It explores three themes: the content of the recommendations that emerged from Australia's Review of Business Tax for the income tax base for businesses, the vision that underpinned those recommendations, and the subsequent execution of the evolving vision of the project in the years after the report was released. This is the lasting legacy of the recommendations of Australia's last business tax Review - a collection of recommendations, certainly, but more especially a mind set, and eight years of quite distinctive tax legislation.

The paper explores five areas in the Review's final report to ascertain whether the Review produced something of wider and more lasting significance - that is, beyond a shopping list of individual successes and failures, in what was delivered and in what was abandoned by the Government.

Keywords: income tax, tax reform, business taxation

JEL Classifications: K34, H25, G38

Working Paper Series