Asymmetric treatment of tax losses
Source: Australian Tax Forum Journal Article
Published Date: 1 Apr 2012
The current asymmetric taxation of business gains and losses causes the effective tax rate to exceed the statutory tax rate. Resulting different effective tax rates across different investment and business structure choice options distort the choices among these options with a loss of efficiency. A potentially important automatic stabiliser also is lost. An ideal solution would combine refunding losses together with the removal of tax expenditures. Neither reform component seems achievable in the immediate future. A more likely reform strategy would involve a combination of carry back of losses and indexation of losses carried forward.
This strategy would reduce distortions arising from the arbitrary annual accounting tax year being shorter than the life of investments which over time generate an economic profit, but it leaves high effective tax rates on risky investments by small businesses.
Sorry, this is subscriber only content.
To gain access to this material and much more - Subscribe Now.
(Note: Members can access Taxation in Australia journal articles without a Tax Knowledge Exchange subscription - please log in to access).
Already a Subscriber? Login now
Already a Subscriber? Login now
Details
- Published By: John Freebairn
- Published On:1 Apr 2012
The material is copyright. Apart any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research criticism or review, as permitted under the copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from The Tax Institute.
Unless expressly stated, opinions are not that of The Tax Institute, which accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the information contained within it.
The Tax Institute
(ABN 45 008 392 372 (PRV14016))
("TTI")
The Tax Institute is a Recognised Tax Agent Association (RTAA) under the Tax Agent Services Regulations 2009.
Copyright Statement
All materials provided on this site are protected by copyright and are owned by or licensed to TTI.
Except as expressly permitted by TTI or the copyright owner, any person or company who uses this site must not use, reproduce, redistribute, retransmit, publish or otherwise transfer, or commercially exploit, the materials or any information, software or other content, in whole or in part, which is available through this site.
Tags
Share this page