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Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Unequal Australia

1 per cent of Australians earned more than $210,100 per year.

0.1 per cent of Australians earned more than $688,700 per year.

0.05 per cent of Australian earned more than a million dollars - around 6000 people.

Billionaire Gina Rinehart receives $32,000 a minute
Tax Office data reveals that 70 Australians with incomes of more than $1 million each in 2010-11 paid no income tax. The 70 earned $194 million among them but by the time their accountants had finished, that had been cut to less than $20,000 in taxable income, or $1 of taxable income for every $9999 that went untaxed. 30 of them claimed deductions for tax advice but between them, they paid their accountants and lawyers $33 million, or more than $1 million each

Since their average declared income was less than $3 million, and no one in their right mind gives a third of their income to their accountant, that implies their real earnings were much higher than $3 million.

In 2010-11 the top 1 per cent of earners took home 9.2 per cent of Australian income, up from 8.6 per cent two years before. In 2006, before the crisis hit, the take exceeded 10 per cent.

''The global financial crisis was just a small deviation from a big long-term trend,'' Dr Leigh said. ''In just about every English speaking country in the world inequality has been climbing since the early 1980s.''

Incomes were least equal in 1950 when the top 1 per cent of Australian earners took home 14 per cent of the nation's pay packet. ''It was the Korean War wool boom,'' Dr Leigh says. ''In that year an astonishing 90 per cent of the top group were farmers.''

By 1981 the share of the top 1 per cent had fallen to 4.6 per cent, its lowest on record.

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