Early federation reviews and 1942 income tax unification, TTPI Working Paper 11/2020
By Paul Tilley (Visiting Fellow, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, ANU)
Abstract:
In Australia’s first five decades as a Federation, tax reform efforts were driven by the need to establish robust revenue bases for a growing nation and settle relative taxing responsibilities of the Commonwealth and state governments. These decades were also a time of crises with two world wars and a depression, these events being catalysts for tax and welfare reforms and influencers of the nature and extent of government in Australia.
The Constitution gave the Commonwealth exclusive access to customs and excise duties but other taxes were open to both levels of government and they soon found themselves in competition. That competition became most intense over income tax with efforts to resolve this being the focus of royal commissions into taxation in 1920–23 and 1932–34, then ultimately the 1942 Commonwealth takeover of income tax. This paper tracks those developments.
The effect of job search requirements on welfare receipt, TTPI Working Paper 12/2020
By Nicolas Hѐrault, Ha Vu & Roger Wilkins
Abstract:
Many countries impose job search requirements on unemployment benefit recipients. Existing studies have evaluated only incremental changes to requirements. Australian reforms in 1995 saw groups of welfare recipients newly subjected to job search requirements, allowing us to produce the first causal estimates of the total effects of such requirements on welfare receipt. Using a quasi-experimental design and administrative data, we find large negative effects on welfare receipt for the mature-age partnered women targeted by the reforms. We also find large negative effects on welfare receipt of their partners, suggesting family labour supply decisions were considerably affected.
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