Image sourced from Fellipe Ditadi, Unsplash.

Credit where credit is due, One Nation is proposing the following policy:

Extracted from One Nation’s website:

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Family Tax Policy

Joint income tax filing allows a couple with at least one dependent child to add their income together, then split the total between them. This will encourage parents to look after their own children, and reduce the cost to the Government of childcare, especially pre-school. It will also encourage home schooling.

Example A.

If we have a couple with children and one person earns $120,000 and the other nothing then the family under income tax splitting would be $9533/yr better off because income tax on $120,000 is $29,467 but income tax on two incomes of $60,000 is $19,934

Example B.

If we have a couple where one person earns  $120,000 and the other $30,000  then jointly they pay $31,709 without income tax splitting.

If the same couple each have an income of $75,000 then they will  only save only $2022 a year.

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At first glance we are wholly supportive of this policy in that it supports families, however upon further investigation we feel like it needs some adjustments.

At Advance Australia Party we wholly support the idea that families are the backbone of Australia and need greater support when it comes to nurturing our own domestic born children. This policy is a step in the right direction, but it does exclude single parent households who are also doing their part in a rising cost of living crisis to nurture the next generation of Australians. As an alternative I propose a slightly different policy, one that is fairer that the Australian public can understand. And that is a Tax Threshold Credit that increases the Tax Free Threshold by $10,000 for every child (under the age of 16) a family has. This alleviates stress for all households that are nurturing children in their family.

How this would work?

Example A:

If there is a couple with a single income stream earning $140,000 with three children, they would normally pay $35,938 in tax. With a tax threshold credit for three children they would save $5220.00 and their tax burden would be reduced to $30,718.

Example B:

If there is a single father earning $120,000 with one child, he would normally pay $29,188 in tax. With a tax threshold credit for one child he would save $1600.00 and his tax burden would be reduced to $27,588.

The policy is not based on how many adults are in the family, but how many children are in the family, and gives the same level of support to those on lower incomes to those on higher incomes. It’s one that Advance Australia Party is proud to back. The Tax Threshold Credit can only be applied to one of the parents income when assessing a couple’s tax, divorced or separated couples will receive the Tax Threshold Credit in line with their Family Court parenting orders and their custody share (i.e. one parent has 60% custody and the other 40% than the former will receive a $6000 TTC and the latter a $4000 TTC.).

We were inspired by One Nations policy to formulate this alternative. Australian Politics work better when we can credit each others ideas and arrive at an optimum solution for the Australian people.