Effect of proposed company tax cuts according to Australian Prime Minister Malcom Bligh Turnbull - "All boats will rise"

As households across the country began the count down to the holiday season, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull smugly informed an ABC interviewer that as a result of a proposed cut in the company tax rate* everyone’s income will increase – “All boats will rise”.

This is another way of referring to that now legendary faux economic theory popular with right-wing politicians – the Trickle Down Effect.

This assertion is tested in an Australian Treasury working paper ANALYSIS OF THE LONG TERM EFFECTS OF A COMPANY TAX CUT (May 2016) which modelled a tax cut reducing company tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent – presumably implemented over the 10 years to 2026-27 proposed by government.

Yes, this working paper estimates that for “a static representative household” “calibrated to match the expenditure, income patterns, and taxes faced by aggregate Australian households” real wages will rise if all other factors in the economy remain unchanged.

So it seems that Turnbull's claim is genuine - or is it?

What Turnbull fails to say is that this “real” wage rise will probably be a paltry est. 1.0-1.1% in total, will take at least 20 years to achieve and will only come about if the average individual also works longer hours.

Based on ABS May 2017 All Employees Average Weekly Total Earnings and an optimistically estimated average annual wages growth of 1.9 per cent; at the end of those 20 years an average worker will have received a total wage increase of est. $851 to $929. Spread out over those 20 years that works out to between 81-89 cents a week extra in his/her pay packet as a direct result of the Turnbull Government’s company tax cut.

Because in real life these company tax cuts are staged and, each stage would have a lag time, no-one is going to see 81-89 cents in their pay packets anytime soon. Indeed a great many people will probably never see this meagre increase at all as the real wages of many low-skilled workers haven't increased alongside higher-skilled workers for the last seven years and there is no indication as to if or when this trend will end.

Over this same twenty-year time period any increase in company income as a result of a 5 per cent cut in the company tax rate would result in millions to one billion plus being added to the bottom lines of a significant number of medium to large corporations. With such savings being just as likely to be diverted into bonuses paid to senior management or paid as dividends to shareholders as they are to being reinvested in a business.

Once more proving that tax cuts for industry, business and those individuals wealthy enough to incorporate their landholdings/investments, have what is essentially a neutral outcome for rest of the population.

Company tax cuts will hardly stir the water beneath those metaphorical boats belonging to ordinary workers.

Therefore this classic illustrative meme still stands under the Turnbull Coalition Government:

Image from Perry Street Palace

Something to remember when it comes time to vote in the next federal election.

* A company tax rate very few companies actually pay. A tax rate that an estimated 36% of more than 2,000 of the biggest corporations doing business in Australia ignore entirely given they unilaterally decided that under current taxation law and for accounting purposes they should pay no tax at all.