Angus Taylor proposed killing big government. By Paul Kelly in The Australian.

Angus Taylor has made one of the bravest calls in history. His pledge to index the personal income tax rate scales has three consequences — it kills big government in Australia, it transfers future revenues from politicians to the people, and it limits the decision-making capacity of governments.

Taylor’s pledge strikes at the interests and values of the Labor Party. It is no accident Jim Chalmers rejects the initiative. His rejection on the ABC was illuminating: “We’re cutting income taxes five times using three different mechanisms.” In short, Chalmers will decide, when, how and by how much income tax will be cut — no way will Labor surrender that power.

 

His tax indexation would kill the automatic growth of government

 

Surrender is the name of this transformation. Higher government spending depends utterly upon personal income tax as a growth tax (unlike either company tax or the GST). Bracket creep — when taxpayers automatically move on to a higher tax rate — is indispensable to sustaining bigger government, the core faith of Albanese Labor. …

Hoist by their own petard:

The Treasurer hammered the argument that Taylor’s policies would add $250bn to the debt … Such a figure merely pointed to the confiscatory capacity of Labor’s bracket creep.

This history is not an argument against Taylor’s budget centrepiece. Indeed, it documents the epic nature of the reform, the tenacity that must sustain it and the in-built tax advantage over Labor that it bequeaths.