The intended audience of Austaxpolicy: the Tax and Transfer Policy Blog is anyone who is interested in the field. Readers may have diverse backgrounds and may work in research, policy, media or other fields. The Tax and Transfer Policy Blog is intended to be reasonably accessible for a wide range of policy, academic and public readers.

The Editors of Austaxpolicy welcome original contributions from authors from all disciplinary backgrounds with expertise on tax and transfer policy, for example:

  • Opinion articles by experts on a topic of tax or transfer policy or research that may, for example, provide informed commentary on a current issue or a proposed reform.
  • New research articles publish new academic research to a wide policy and public audience, for example by the original author or a commentator, ideally linking to the underlying research paper or published source where available.
  • Review articles provide an academic review of published books, articles or research papers on tax and transfer policy, providing an accessible and interesting discussion of topical literature to support academic, policy and public debate.
  • Briefs explain topics or concepts in the tax and transfer field to support other blog articles and inform public and policy debate. For instance, an opinion article about Australian company tax reform may have an accompanying brief that explains franking credits in the Australian tax system. Briefs may be written by staff at the TTPI or may be contributed by blog authors.

Contributing and publication of your article

To contribute to Austaxpolicy, please send us your article using the Submit an Article form on the Blog, or as an attachment in an email the editors. Unsolicited posts are welcome, although publication is not guaranteed. If you are unsure of whether a particular topic would make an appropriate blog article, please review the articles already on the Blog and feel free to contact us to discuss.

For your contribution to be published, you need to ‘Agree to our terms and conditions’ which means that your work is licensed to us under a Creative Commons licence to encourage people to republish, share and discuss your ideas: see more at About this Blog. We will send you an email confirming that we wish to publish your article and including a request that you reply to confirm you agree to our terms and conditions as set out on the blog.

If you identify any errors or corrections needed to your published article, please contact the Editors immediately and corrections will be made as soon as possible. Apart from corrections, the Editors will not generally modify articles once published, as they are permanent publications online. If you wish to change a position or statement in an article once published, please contact us to discuss. In this circumstance, the Editors would usually include a note at the end of the article that it was modified on a specified date subsequent to publication.

Style Guide

A typical article for Austaxpolicy is between 800 and 1,200 words. The Editors will do a light edit of your article and may make some more substantial changes. Where changes are substantial, we will send you the edited article for your approval before posting. Small changes, such as correcting grammar or spelling, will be made without correspondence.

Blog articles will have a title and may use some headings but will rarely use sub-headings.

Authors should explain technical terms and concepts and avoid jargon and acronyms as far as possible.  However, analysis, statistics and data should still be supported with appropriate sources. These sources should be provided as far as possible as hyperlinks rather than as references. It is preferable to link to material that is not behind a paywall where possible. Articles may list a few references or further reading at the end.

Articles may include charts or figures, with a title and source. Ideally, authors would provide an original figure with data for any charts or figures.

To liven up the Blog, we may post an image for your article. This image will be visible within the article. If you have a suggested image, please provide this. Alternatively, we are happy to provide an image for you. If you wish to provide your own image, please ensure that the image does not violate any copyright restrictions.

Author Bio and Author Image

Each blog author is provided with have a permanent head shot image and short bio on the Blog when they contribute their first article.

First time contributors to the blog should provide a 3 line bio and a head shot phot to be used as a profile picture. Please also provide a hyperlink to a longer bio page, for example on a University website, if you have one. You will have an opportunity to approve your Author bio. It will remain unchanged for subsequent publications, unless you notify us of corrections or updates.

Download this guide

The Tax and Transfer policy Blog Guide for Contributors is available to download here.