The Tax System

It's the end of another financial year and time to lodge my tax return again. I got my group certificate from work and found that the Government had taken about one third of my pay through tax. The tax rates in Australia are some of the highest in the world, and its fair enough that people complain about that. But people tend to forget that the tax they pay also goes towards a lot of things they use.

Obviously, I'm not happy either that the Government is taking so much tax. Who wouldn't want to have more money to spend on things. But when people also start saying that the tax money is going nowhere useful, that's when I disagree.

I think the road conditions, health system, unemployment benefits and aged care in Australia are some of the best in the world. I think that Aussies who are born here have had it so good that they don't even know what bad is.

People are constantly complaining about the health system, how you have to wait forever to get treatment in public hospitals. Well, there are limited resources and they can only go around so far. The fact that you can even get surgery for free is so much better than in most other countries. In Asia, if you don't have money, you either live in pain or have to borrow large amonts of money to pay for your surgery. The Government is trying to get people who can afford it to buy private health cover by offering tax incentives. People who can afford private should get it and leave more resources for those that can't afford it.

The road conditions in Australia are also very good. Its such a large country yet many of the roads are paved and in excellent conditions. The fact that you can drive from Melbourne to Sydney along a freeway for the whole length doesn't come for free.

The thing that does get me maddest is how tax dollars are used to support the unemployed. I'm not against giving unemployed people money to help them live, its only when people abuse that. And a lot of people do abuse the unemployment benefits. There are people who get unemployment while secretly working. The should be stamped out by making the punishment much harsher if they get caught. Others who abuse the system are those long term unemployed. When I finished uni, I couldn't find a job for 4 months so I was on the benefits. After 3 months, they made me go to intensive training to try and find a job. There, I saw how the Government deals with unemployed people. There are basically two groups. People who were short term unemployed and which they forced to do many things. You have to look for a certain number of jobs each week, go to training etc. This is fair enough and definitely helpful to get people to find work. Then if you're still unemployed after 6 months, you have to do part time work for your benefits, which I am also in favour of.

The group who get extremely preferential treatment in my view are the long term unemployed. They only need to attend training once every fortnight rather than daily. They don't even need to look for work weekly and fill out the booklet. They don't need to go and work for their benefits. Bascially, these are the people the Government have given up on and just can't be bothered pushing anymore. Well there's a very easy solution to that, just cut their benefits. I cannot believe that anyone can possibly be looking for work for over a year and not find anything. A lot of these long term unemployed are the ones who are secretly working or just doing things that they enjoy, such as the stereotypical "surfer dude" who's on long term unemployment. For example, in the training course, when the trainer said that there was such and such job available, all the short term unemployed people were like "I'll apply for that". Then the trainer said there were a perfect jobs for some of the long term unemployed. She was basically handing the job on a silver platter to these people. They had the job as long as they went for the interview. The work was what these people had said they wanted. One of them said "Yes, this is the type of work I wanted, but I don't want to travel 20 minutes to go to this job everyday". How can you be so picky when you're bloody unemployed. And 20 minutes, c'mon, many people travel much longer than that to go to work. The second person said "Oh this job is not really want I want", even though he had been unemployed for 10 years. What the hell type of work do you want? How can you search for 10 years and not find anything. I hear McDonalds are hiring down the road. Oohh, just recounting the events is making me angry. How and why these long term unemployed are getting away with such things is unbelievable. In most countries, your benefits would stop after about 6 months, which in most cases is adequate time if you really look for work. So much money is going towards these long term unemployed, some of which I personally know take holidays, drive new cars and "own" houses registered under their relatives or kids names.

There's my rant for this week. Tax time is always when you hear everyone complaing about the tax system, myself included. Hopefully, I will be able to get some of my hard earned money back from the tax office. That money is always the sweetest money to get, even though it was my money in the first place, but yet I fell greatful to the Government when they give it back to me.