GETTING IT OFF YOUR CHEST

Maybe they thought I was out of line, so that’s why Business Spectator didn’t publish my comment on Robert Gottliebson’s article “Blame CEOs for a National Cost Explosion” yesterday.

I wasn’t out of line.

As Business Spectator usually publishes my comments, maybe I was getting a bit too close to the bone in criticising how analysts–such as they?–were wrong in either condemning the Henry Tax Review’s recipe for reforming of an out-of-control tax system or else damming the report with faint praise.

I consider the Henry panel’s recommendations for Australia’s Future Tax System to be world’s best revenue reform practice. They provide an urgently needed template for making the necessary shift from taxes to resource rents if we are to negotiate our way our way out of the debt deflation that’s currently grinding world economies to a halt.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. This is what I said:-

No, Robert. I blame the blindness and shortsightedness of those business analysts who refused to see what Ken Henry’s tax inquiry tried to make clear.

Businesses can’t cope with the deadweight of the myriad inefficient taxes and burgeoning requirements they are all required to face.

Henry’s panel wanted more than 100 taxes ABOLISHED and a quid pro quo of an all-in (instead of selective) land tax, plus all Australians to share in the surplus rents (not profits) from the mining boom.