Aust Federal land tax and Income tax
'The first budget of the new Australian Commonwealth in 1901-02 raised a total of just £18 million, all of it by customs and excise duties. There was no income tax. In 1910, to finance a national age pension, the new Fisher Labor government stunned the country's landed gentry by "implementing the unthinkable", a national land tax.

'Julie Smith, an economist at the ANU's Federalism Research Centre, writes in her compelling 1993 volume, Taxing Popularity: The story of Taxation in Australia, how the new tax introduced the principle of a graduated rate structure and, in the words of Fisher, was designed to "break up the big estates". She adds: "As Labor's Billy Hughes observed at the time, '1/450th of the population owning three-eighths of the entire landed wealth of Australia comprised a sermon more eloquent than the finest oration ever given.' "

The influence of Henry George over the early Labor party and the land tax legislation in particular is relatively well known, but Ramsay's statement that land tax was to fund a national aged pension begs the question as to whether Tom Paine's pamphlet 'Agrarian Justice' was a direct influence as well. The Federal land tax was abolished by the Menzies government in 1953, which as not as regressive a move as might seem, as at the same time it allowed all 6 states to pick up land tax as a source of revenue, which they did and have continued to use to this day. Ramsay in this article also discusses the steady and eventually dramatic erosion of the principle of the progressive income tax over the decades and indicates the need for genuine tax reform, rather than the phony 'tax cuts' offered by the Costello budget. We've had that many 'tax cuts' over the last few decades that its a wonder anyone is paying any tax at all. Curiously, the government's revenue at $178b is higher than it has ever been.

Aust Federal land tax and Income tax
'The first budget of the new Australian Commonwealth in 1901-02 raised a total of just £18 million, all of it by customs and excise duties. There was no income tax. In 1910, to finance a national age pension, the new Fisher Labor government stunned the country's landed gentry by "implementing the unthinkable", a national land tax.

'Julie Smith, an economist at the ANU's Federalism Research Centre, writes in her compelling 1993 volume, Taxing Popularity: The story of Taxation in Australia, how the new tax introduced the principle of a graduated rate structure and, in the words of Fisher, was designed to "break up the big estates". She adds: "As Labor's Billy Hughes observed at the time, '1/450th of the population owning three-eighths of the entire landed wealth of Australia comprised a sermon more eloquent than the finest oration ever given.' "

The influence of Henry George over the early Labor party and the land tax legislation in particular is relatively well known, but Ramsay's statement that land tax was to fund a national aged pension begs the question as to whether Tom Paine's pamphlet 'Agrarian Justice' was a direct influence as well. The Federal land tax was abolished by the Menzies government in 1953, which as not as regressive a move as might seem, as at the same time it allowed all 6 states to pick up land tax as a source of revenue, which they did and have continued to use to this day. Ramsay in this article also discusses the steady and eventually dramatic erosion of the principle of the progressive income tax over the decades and indicates the need for genuine tax reform, rather than the phony 'tax cuts' offered by the Costello budget. We've had that many 'tax cuts' over the last few decades that its a wonder anyone is paying any tax at all. Curiously, the government's revenue at $178b is higher than it has ever been.