2013 election promises

Public service announcement: Remember to vote this Saturday!

I missed voting in one election before and got a fine for it. It felt great having to pay for not exercising one of my constitutional rights. Anyway I'm going to list some of the relevant tax and small business election promises that both Liberal and Labor are making so that we can refer back here later to see how many were broken.

Labor

• Reduce GST reporting requirements from quarterly to annual.
  (This is nice but you all better still reconcile your bank accounts regularly.)
   
• Temporarily increase new asset purchase write-off from $6,500 to $10,000 until 30 June 2015.
  (Sounds nice but the existing $6,500 limit covered most things already.)
   
• Committed to delivering the National Broadband Network (NBN).
  (This isn't new but they keep going on about it; probably because it cost so much. Well I hope you guys live in one of those roll-out areas because it's not even planned for my suburb yet.)
   
• Continue the company tax loss carry-back scheme and expand the carry back period to two years as planned.
  (I think the original intention of this was to save companies who have a bad year from going bankrupt but if your company has to rely on tax relief to survive then you really are just delaying the inevitable. Reminds me of the Australian car manufacturing industry.)
   
• Continue with not allowing the statutory formula for motor vehicle fringe benefits tax.
   (Apparently this will generate more tax revenue for the government but if employers stop buying cars then there will be nothing to tax. Now who is going to pay that $200 million package promised to the car manufacturing industry?)

Liberal

• Abolish the carbon tax.
  (Bit late now since I doubt prices will come down for things like electricity and freight costs.)
   
• Reduce company tax rate to 28.5% from 1 July 2015.
  (This is very nice. The resulting franking account reduction should be negligible for most of us.)
   
• Delay the compulsory superannuation guarantee increases.
  (Well good if you're the employer and bad if you're the employee.)
   
• Abolish the mining tax.
  (Olympic Dam expansion might then go ahead after all.)
   
• Discontinue the $6,500 new asset purchase write-off and $5,000 accelerated depreciation for motor vehicles.
  (This is disappointing. That Labor policy of increasing the write-off is looking pretty good now.)
   
• Discontinue the company tax loss carry-back scheme.
  (Hopefully none of us need to use this.)
   
• Reinstate the statutory formula for motor vehicle fringe benefits tax.
  (You all might as well finish off those log books since we can use them for five years anyway.)
   

I'll keep adding to this post as I find things during the week. Remember to do your own digging around before you vote as these are my own opinions only. Hope all the dads out there had a