When the Howard government prepared to introduce the goods and services tax (GST) in 2000, the most far-reaching tax reform since WWII, I used the Freedom of Information law to identify the real impact of this new regressive tax.
The Government had assumed that every individual and household had the same spending pattern, whereas this was patently untrue. With the benefit of FoI, I discovered that Treasury had modelled the impact using a more diverse survey of spending patterns which showed that the cost of the new tax on same families would be 3-5 times greater than the government’s compensation.
This reporting was used in full-page newspaper advertisements by the Labor Party and was cited by Senate parties in their bid to secure a Senate inquiry into the tax. This led to major changes to soften the impact of the tax, including the removal of food. These changes remain in place today.
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