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Prime Minister John Howard has left the door open for across-the-board tax cuts in the next budget and says Australians want tax relief, not reform. Mr Howard said any money available in a healthy budget should be returned to the public through tax cuts. ``And in returning it to the public we don't just focus on a small section of the public, we try and focus as far as possible on everybody,'' he told Southern Cross radio. ``I don't know at this stage what room there will be in the budget, we haven't begun the process. We'll have a bit of a preliminary look at things before Christmas, very preliminary, and then we'll get in earnest into the process next year. ``Clearly any government in its right mind, if it's got the capacity to do so, wants to continue to give tax relief.'' Tax thresholds would lift automatically on July 1 next year, providing further cuts. ``More than 80 per cent of Australian taxpayers will be on a top rate of no more than 30 cents in the dollar and only three per cent of the taxpaying workforce in this country will be on the top rate of 47 cents in the dollar,'' Mr Howard said. The prime minister said Australians' preference was for tax cuts, not reform. ``In the end, what the public wants, if we can afford it as a nation after we've provided the necessary ... is a lower tax burden,'' Mr Howard told Macquarie Radio. ''(But) you can't have a tax reform that doesn't lower the tax burden because people will think it's a sham. "If the reform does not result in a lower tax burden people don't think it is a reform.'' |
