CANBERRA: The tax on an Australian family earning $82,000 a year has risen to the second highest rate in the developed world, figures from the OECD show. Australia’s tax level now trails only Denmark’s for a single-income family earning $82,000 a year with two children, according to the report.
Average families with two children and one parent earning up to $82,000 and another earning $54,000 face the highest tax levels in a decade, and the fourth highest among 36 other economies in the developed world, at 22.1 per cent. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has favoured corporate tax cuts instead of personal income tax cuts ahead of the May budget, arguing cutting the corporate tax rate for companies worth up to $50 million would flow into increased productivity and higher wages for workers. “As we can afford to reduce personal income taxes, we will,” he said in an address to the National Press Club in February. The Turnbull government adjusted the tax bands in the 2016 budget to prevent bracket creep, with half a million Australians potentially falling into the second highest tax bracket, putting billions of dollars in wages at risk.
