The last holdout servos finally went above $2/l today. I topped up at $1.49 last week. Is this even real?

Jazz hands!! 👐

The top 1% of earners pay roughly 40-45% of all income tax.

That’s not true, though it’s a common misconception. To account for 40% of all income tax, you’d need to incorporate the top 5% of earners. Top 1% vs. top 5% doesn’t sound significant, but it truly is. Someone in the top 1% makes roughly twice the amount someone in the top 5% makes. We’re actually talking about different things and the same things all at the same time. It’s confusing, but bear with me and I’ll hopefully get us onto the same page.

Income streams are logarithmic in nature. This is why we always talk about “median salary” when discussing the topic. If we use the “average” salary (mean), then that would come out to roughly $106,000. However, if you are earning this amount, you’re in the top 25% of earners in Australia. The median salary sits at around $68,000. That number amazes me, since our rent alone is $41,600. I have no clue how people are surviving on the median, let alone half the nation on less than that.

Someone in the top 20% is making $128,000.
Someone in the top 10% is making $165,000. Not a massive jump in salary, this seems reasonable.
Someone in the top 5% is making $195,000. Again, that’s only a $30k jump to account for a decent chunk of the population.
Someone in the top 1% is making $385,000. Roughly double the amount for someone in the top 5%. To speak to your point, their increase in take-home pay is only about $100,700, because yes - they pay 45% tax.
Someone in the top 0.5% is making over $550,000.

Now that we have these numbers out of the way, here’s why we’re talking about different things: Someone in the top 0.5% of earners still likely doesn’t have $3m in super. Or if they do, it’s just barely.

Someone in this salary bracket doesn’t hit it at 20. They usually hit it in their late 40’s to 50’s. At that point, they only have 20ish years of work left before they retire. If we assume our top earner is depositing $50,000 into their super fund at 5% growth, it’ll take them 28+ years to attain $3m. They just don’t have time to get to the point where they are affected by this policy. Or if they are super lucky and have managed to attain say $3.1m, they’re only taxed 30% on the earnings of $100k - not the earnings of the remaining $3m.

So, like I said: We’re talking about different things. The top 0.5% earners are not the same as the top 0.5% super fund holders. The top 0.5% super fund holders are not getting there from regular income. They are rich. They probably don’t work, because they don’t need to. They probably don’t pay much income tax, because they don’t need to work. You probably pay more income tax than these people.

This article is discussing a tax on earnings in super funds above $3m.

I think that people who are earning more than my annual salary just from growth in the value on their pile of cash should be charged tax on that growth.

They can afford it better than any of us, and I’m always amazed at people who think this is a bad thing.

None of the present changes apply to your examples.

Perhaps that’s the answer to my question: people criticise this tax because they worry it’ll affect them?

Do you honestly think that 0.5% of the population are responsible for 50% of the nation’s income tax? That’s hysterical.

We aren’t talking about specialist doctors and lawyers and successful salespeople. Those peasants on their measly half-million annual salaries are not putting enough away to be affected by this law.

In point of fact, these people are rich enough to employ wealth managers and accountants to manage their tax affairs. Retainers who know and utilise every tax loophole to minimise the tax they pay. You’d be surprised how little as a percentage of their income they are paying the ATO. Economically, we would miss none of them if they left.

We’re talking about people who are putting over $100k per year into their super funds. They are not moving in the same circles as you and me.

With $3m in super, you could draw $100k/year and assuming 5% growth you’d have over $3.5m after 10 years:

Year,Starting Balance,Withdrawal,Interest Earned (5%),Year-End Balance  
1,"$3,000,000","−$100,000","+$145,000","$3,045,000"  
2,"$3,045,000","−$100,000","+$147,250","$3,092,250"  
3,"$3,092,250","−$100,000","+$149,613","$3,141,863"  
4,"$3,141,863","−$100,000","+$152,093","$3,193,956"  
5,"$3,193,956","−$100,000","+$154,698","$3,248,653"  
6,"$3,248,653","−$100,000","+$157,433","$3,306,086"  
7,"$3,306,086","−$100,000","+$160,304","$3,366,390"  
8,"$3,366,390","−$100,000","+$163,320","$3,429,710"  
9,"$3,429,710","−$100,000","+$166,485","$3,496,195"  
10,"$3,496,195","−$100,000","+$169,810","$3,566,005"  

“But $100k won’t be enough in ten years!” I hear you say. Ok, let’s give ourselves a 10% pay-rise every 10 years.

Year Range,Annual Withdrawal,Year-End Balance (End of Decade)  
Years 1–10,"$100,000.00","$3,566,005"  
Years 11–20,"$110,000.00","$4,355,900"  
Years 21–30,"$121,000.00","$5,497,281"  
Years 31–40,"$133,100.00","$7,196,668"  

With a starting fund of $3m, and a 10% payrise every decade, after 40 years we have over $7m in our super fund. Now, what happens to our poor rich person who needs to pay 30% on growth above $3m?

Year,Annual Withdrawal,Ending Balance,Annual Tax Paid
1,"$100,000","$3,045,000",$0
10,"$110,000","$3,472,749","~$6,144"
20,"$133,100","$3,871,911","~$12,048"
30,"$161,051","$4,110,378","~$15,716"
40,"$194,872","**$4,052,857**","~$15,271"

Instead of ending up with $7m after 40 years, this poor individual now only has $4m after 40 years.

As I said, I really wish I had this problem!

People with inadequate wages don’t have $3m super accounts. This law affects 0.5% of Australians.

I have no idea why every news article on this matter makes it sound like everyone should be against these changes. Superannuation has for decades been a neat place to dump surplus salary to get it taxed at a lower income tax rate.

Under the superannuation tax changes, the concessional tax rate on earnings for balances between $3m and $10m will double from 15% to 30%.

Balances above $10m will be subject to a new, higher 40% rate.

Most of us are not affected by these changes. I truly, genuinely wish I were affected.

We’re usually pretty immune to these sorts of shortages, because WA grows so much of its foods locally.

I noticed Aldi had no yoghurt for a bit, but there has been plenty of local supplier stocks.

https://youtu.be/vdks9shZpDw

A little nostalgia for you.

So far as I know, nothing (legally). She wasn’t on trial. Something may have happened to her later, but I don’t think so. I think I’d have heard if it had.

Of course: everyone who knew her knew about the whole case and its outcome. It would be an inaccurate statement to say she faced no consequences at all. Everyone - male and female alike, was furious with her. And I expect the story follows her around 20 years later whenever anyone Googles her.

The full paper would give better context of that statement. It’s quite accessible and worth reading. The thing that is consistent across all studies, nations and decades is that false accusations are rare.

It turns out this is actually a fairly difficult topic to accurately measure if for no other reason that a lot of cases (Particularly earlier ones) boil down to ‘he said, she said’. Then there is the matter that lots of sexual assault cases go unreported - or are dropped for assorted reasons. Unreported assaults are a huge factor among certain cultural groups.

I usually hate when mods delete popular threads, but this post does break Rule 1.4: “Not United States Internal News”.

Holy engagement bait, Batman! What a terrible headline.

Yes, it is a fact that women lie about domestic and sexual violence. I’ve seen first-hand a family seriously impacted by a false accusation. The son was detained in prison for a year, the parents took out a mortgage on their home to defend the case and finally the girl admitted in court that she fabricated the whole thing. The son was acquitted. These cases happen. Here’s a fairly broad paper on the matter discussing several deeper studies spanning several countries including Australia, Canada and the UK.

Among the seven studies that attempted some degree of scrutiny of police classifications and/or applied a definition of false reporting at least similar to that of the IACP, the rate of false reporting, given the many sources of potential variation in findings, is relatively consistent:

• 2.1% (Heenan & Murray, 2006)
• 2.5% (Kelly et al., 2005)
• 3.0% (McCahill et al., 1979)
• 5.9% (the present study)
• 6.8% (Lonsway & Archambault, 2008)
• 8.3% (Grace et al., 1992)
• 10.3% (Clark & Lewis, 1977)
• 10.9% (Harris & Grace, 1999)

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the elephant in the room:

IN OVER 90% OF CASES, THE RAPES WERE CREDIBLE! FALSE ACCUSATIONS ARE THE EXCEPTION!!

No, but I’m closer than I expected to be (within $20k for my age bracket). I can probably make that much up in my remaining work years.

My wife’s super on the other hand is going to suck. She took about a decade off to be a stay at home mother when the kids were little and is going to put her well behind. The system doesn’t treat parents who do this well. Let’s face it: 90% of the time, it’s women who are career hobbled by parenthood and super pauses.

$500 million purely in sales of software he wrote alone? That would be a feat for sure.

Initially, it was him and his wife, yes. Though they now have a decent sized company with a few hundred employees. I didn’t realise his venture had gotten so big until this thread and I googled him today. Before you get all angry that he’s “profiting off those people’s work”, ask whether those people are better off for working for him or if he should keep all the work and wealth to himself.

The part that’s wrong isn’t doing well and making money, it’s advocating against taxing corporations way more than we are, lobbying for loopholes, and engaging in rent seeking behaviour. Which is extremely, extremely common. Having some kind of cap on how much wealth you can amass seems sensible to me.

I haven’t heard of him doing any of those things. Of course I moved to the other side of the country and no longer move in the same circles as he does. He still has a reputation in IT circles for being a chill bloke, though.

A former work colleague of mine might. He’s well over half-way there at least and still gaining.

He quit his job and wrote some software that is used all over the world. If you make a thing and enough people buy it, you get rich. In his case, very rich. He didn’t inherit his wealth. He didn’t start out already a millionaire. His wealth is not coming from being a parasite on society. He isn’t taking resources or hoarding land. He’ll be the first to tell you he is monumentally lucky, but I also can’t see anything he’s doing that’s wrong.

That was called the “Mining tax” and it’s mere proposal killed the Kevin07 movement before Mr Rudd finished his first term. All for the measly cost of a ~$20 Million smear campaign blitz. Bargain!

Frankly, because Australia has things that the USA does not have and really needs. Australia is a stable and reliable political friend in a region of the globe that is close enough to the antipode of mainland USA. Our proximity and unused land affords our US allies with space and privacy to operate with relative comfort. Their bases in Australia also have much shorter logistic chains to operate compared with other remote locales like islands as well.

The USA would be impacted militarily if they lost Australia as an ally. Not irrevocably, they’d get by. But it would cost them a lot more than the simple civility and respect it takes to maintain their relationship with Australia.

Neither nations really needs the other. Our partnership has been convenient for both of us, and it really would be a shame for both nations if that partnership were to lapse.

Apologies all. That user is not representative of Aussie.Zone users. We’re generally a chill bunch.