Happy Holidays from Austaxpolicy – Austaxpolicy: The Tax and Transfer Policy Blog

As the year 2021 comes to an end, the Austaxpolicy team would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our contributors and readers for your support and contributions throughout the year. We know the last two years have been tough for many and we hope the end of the year holiday season could offer some respite and serve as a reset for a better year in 2022.

In 2021, we published 80 articles written by 106 experts across academia, practice, and international organisations. We also posted more than 240 news pieces. Many of our blog posts address the most pressing global issues today, including the pandemic, climate change and economic inequality, and how tax and transfer policy could offer a way forward. We also continued to present the latest research from academia and our authors shared their tax and transfer policy insights for a post-COVID world. In May and June, we held our annual Budget Forum which featured different perspectives about the 2021-22 Federal Budget from our contributors.

During the year, more than 48,000 readers visited our blog and we recorded more than 80,000 page views. More than 44 per cent of our readers are from Australia, followed by overseas readers from the United States, India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, China and other countries.

We are taking our down under summer break from publishing the blog from today. We will return with new energy and great new posts in February 2022. From now till then, you may pick up the articles you missed during the year, by searching for Topics or Authors, or just browsing the site. We have also compiled our top ten new articles in 2021 and the top ten articles over the last three years (2019-2021) below.

All the best for a restful and peaceful holiday and a happy new year from the Austaxpolicy team!

From Mathias Sinning, Miranda Stewart, Sonali Walpola and Editorial Assistant Teck Chi Wong.

Top ten new articles from 2021

1. [Budget Forum 2021] Fiscal Policy in the COVID-19 Era (10 June 2021), by Chris Murphy.
2. Has COVID-19 Opened the Door to an Australian Basic Income? (22 February 2021), by Troy Henderson, Ben Spies-Butcher and Ben Phillips.
3. The Taxation of Capital Gains in Trusts after Bamford: A Critical Evaluation of Subdivision 115-C ITAA97 (11 February 2021), by Sonali Walpola.
4. Equity in Taxation: An International Comparison (26 April 2021), by Nanak Kakwani.
5. Building Burdens into the Transfer System: A Closer Look at the Cashless Debit Card (6 December 2021), by Shelley Bielefeld.
6. How Do Corporate Tax Rates Affect Location Decisions of Firms and a Country’s Industry Structure? Lessons for Australia (13 April 2021), by Trevor Rose, Mathias Sinning and Robert Breunig.
7. Escaping the Exchange of Information: Tax Evasion via Citizenship-by-Investment (24 August 2021), by Dominika Langenmayr and Lennard Zyska.
8. Poverty by Design: How Single Mothers’ Benefits Are Reduced Without Them Knowing (27 July 2021), by Kay Cook.
9. The Fraud Triangle and Tax Evasion (20 July 2021), by Leandra Lederman.
10. Deemed Source of Income: Expanding Australia’s Domestic Tax Base (28 June 2021), by Joseph Tranzillo.

Top ten articles from 2019 to 2021

1. Consumption Taxation in Rawls’ Theory of Justice (5 September 2019), by David Elkins.
2. Politics of Taxation in the Roman Empire (28 February 2019), by Sven Günther.
3. No Case for Tightening the Age Pension Means Test: A Response to Michael Keane’s Analysis (26 July 2019), by Andrew Podger.
4. Should We Tax Sugar — and If So, How? (17 June 2019), by Peter Lloyd and Donald MacLaren.
5. Australia’s 50% Capital Gains Tax Discount: Policy Oversight? (3 November 2020), by John Minas and Brett Freudenberg.
6. Why We Use Private Trusts in Australia: The Income Tax Dimension Explained (25 October 2019), by Alex Evans.
7. [Budget Forum 2019] Tax Offsets and Equity in the Scheme for Taxing Resident Individuals (17 April 2019), by Sonali Walpola and Yuan Ping.
8. Increase in Newstart Allowance Long Overdue (31 January 2019) by John Hewson.
9. The Tax System Implications of Universal Basic Income (28 February 2020), by Myles Bayliss.
10. ‘Crowding Out’ Evidence-Based Policy: The Case of Negative Gearing (24 January 2019), by Isla Pawson.