When it’s a tax credit which becomes part of your taxable income. Barack Obama giveth $13 per week with one hand and instructs the IRS to retrieve it with the other.
Rush Limbaugh Show: Friday February 27, 2009
RUSH: Gail in Lakeside, Arizona, you’re on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for all you do for us.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I wanted to share quickly what I found out when I had my taxes prepared last week. The man that prepared my taxes for me cautioned me to watch out for my tax cut. He said, [“]and you may want to adjust your withholding to take that back away, because the tax rate tables for next year when preparing taxes are not changing[“]. So I could possibly owe my tax cut back to the government next year.
RUSH: You gotta be kidding. Not even I was aware of this trick. Say that again. They’re not changing the rates, right?
CALLER: The tax rate tables that they use when you prepare your income tax.
RUSH: Yeah, these are not tax cuts.
CALLER: Right, exactly.
RUSH: These are transfer payments. These are tax credits and all that. There’s no tax cut here. I should have been able to think of this on my own here, absolutely right. You’re getting income, you’re going to be taxed on it next year.
CALLER: Right. And we won’t be able to pay it back $13 a week.
RUSH: ‘Cause the same rates — ah, man, your tax preparer is not only pretty smart but he’s pretty forthright and honest with you on it. So what you are going to do?
CALLER: Change my withholding and take my tax cut away so I don’t have to pay it back next year. Thank you, president, for nothing.
RUSH: (laughing) It just never ends. There’s nothing real from these people. They don’t say anything they mean.
It took me a little while to get my head around this because virtually every tax cut which we receive in Australia is via a change to the tax rate tables, and the federal treasury usually produce examples of what the effective tax cut (ie. increase in net pay, post PAYG witholding) would be for people earning certain incomes, which then get repeated on the news.
The “tax cuts” in the US are not that at all…in fact they’re about half way between the $900 stimulus payments which the Australian government are handing out to a lot of people, and the tax table adjustments. The $900 payments are effectively the government giving people money and are deemed to not be taxable income, and the US $13 per week is similar in that it’s a “discount” on your income tax and is therefore a payment from the US government, however as there are no changes in the tax tables and the $13 per week is not deemed to be untaxable, it ends up becoming taxable income…I’m still struggling to fully comprehend the horribly convoluted legislation which produces such a bizarre outcome, but I sure am glad that I’m paying tax in Australia and not in the US.
Where does it end? How many more tax problems are going to fall out of the books of the people in Barack Obama’s administration?
This time it’s White House chief of staff Rahm “Rambo” Emanuel with problems, a man who, incidentally, was on the board of Freddie Mac in the early part of this decade when the board ignored fraudulent activity according to The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency. Needless to say, that particular issue at Freddie Mac is partially responsible for the current global economic crisis.
Anyway, back to Emanuel’s tax problem. He lived rent-free in the home of Democratic Congresswoman Rosa De Lauro for five years, the value of which exceeds $100,000, which effectively makes it taxable income and based on previous case law in the United States, it will be up to Emanuel to prove that it wasn’t taxable income, not for the IRS to prove that it was, should this matter come up for audit.
It’s not just the taxation side of things which are problematic for Emanuel here, there is also an ethical issue. Mr. Emanuel and Mrs. De Lauro claim that the accommodation was a gift…well that may be so, but if it is the case, then Emanuel was supposed to declare the gift as per the congressional ethics rules…but he didn’t.
I’m also forced to wonder why a multimillionaire such as Emanuel needed free accommodation.
And there’s more. Mrs. De Lauro’s husband is Democratic pollster Stan Greenburg. During the time that Mr. Emmanuel was living in the De Lauro/Greenburg house, he was serving on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee which granted Greenburg contracts in excess of $550,000. Can anyone spell conflict of interest?
On the bright side, as one of the people responsible for the global economic crisis, he should be in a perfect position to explain how it all happened, and how to reverse it…although I shouldn’t be so optimistic, in reality I doubt that Emanuel would be stupid enough to incriminate himself by telling us all about his full role in the economic crisis.
This email landed in my inbox in the early hours of this morning. Unfortunately it is not good news.
Dear to Mr. Samuel on today,
I am have still not been hear from of doctors in Russia at hospital where Mother of Russia is which was causing many concern and worry for me as I am not knowing of what is happening to her.
Dear and wonderful Uncle Boris did driving from other side of Russia for long time to see Mother and he did do tephlephone call to me in minutes not long ago which was very much nice to be doing hear from him but he was not having the good newses. There is strange rule of in hospital in this part of the Russia that they can only be doing talks to family who are the direct family and Uncle Boris has to be doing prove to them that he is of direct family and is directly the brother of Mother which he is but now has to be waiting for the birth certificate to be done of send from fax in the registry office.
This is rule of very silly in to me for opinion as I do not see how it can be cause problems to have in-law people of relation at the very least for talking to of problems even if not of the doing permissions.
The doctors would not be do say of why they have not been do call of me on tephlephone and so I will do ring them today although I did have try yesterday which was not good as they were not able to be doing answering due to some emergency in hospital and they were busy.
The good news is that I did do speak to lovely elderly neighbour of Mother Mrs. Stroshlopcnefravinich Frorshnik who is be do of say that nice mouse Squeelivich is happy and healthy and has been much happy with tasty treats of boiled pumpkin which cheese on top. I did not know that mouses did do like of pumpkin but it is good to be knowing that they are.
I am must now be having some sleeping time before going to work of gardens in morning where nice Mr. Boss has done say that I can be making tephlephone call of international to Russia and also be receiving the calls if the need is OK because of conditions with Mother who I am do hope is of better than when she was found on weekend.
Please be doing and have day of much wonderful.
From Maritz
Ms. Maritzkrozlavsky Throrglasnishozly
Well ain’t that a bureaucratic nightmare at its worst. How tempted would you be under those circumstances to break in to the hospital and find your relative regardless of what the front office administrators say?
I was going to publish a few blog posts today, but time got away from me, so I’ll settle for one which doesn’t require a lot of writing.
Last week, impeached Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, agreed to be interviewed by Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, and after watching the footage, I have to wonder why he agreed to it. Blagojevich is currently accused of trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat, and is facing a number of criminal charges, and it would have been very clear that this is what Hannity wanted to talk to him about…Hannity is also from the other side of the political divide to Blagojevich, so the interview was almost certainly going to be hostile.
With this in mind, you would think that Mr. Blagojevich would expect a difficult interview, and would therefore have some answers ready…but no, rather than answers, we got defences such as “I can’t comment on criminal proceedings” and “the tapes [being used as evidence against me] are being quoted by the media out of context.
There was no insight provided in to the context of the tapes, but there were a number of times when Blagojevich looked uncomfortable being asked certain questions.
I really don’t understand why he agreed to the interview when he could have expressed his position much more clearly in a press release. I’m sorry Rod, but going in to an interview with the sole intention of saying “I can’t answer that” really doesn’t do your public image any favours.
Or should that be “change that should scare the socks off us”?
You would probably be well aware that the US government passed the final version of President Obama’s stimulus package on Saturday morning Australian time, that’s no secret, but there does seem to be a secret here, a secret being kept from the Australian public at least.
Some of the US media have reported this but I haven’t seen it in the Australian media at all so far. Perhaps I missed it, or perhaps the Australian media were too busy with home affairs (and there have been a lot of them lately) to mention anything more than “US stimulus passed”, regardless, it’s unlikely that many Australians know that the way in which the US stimulus package was passed was in contravention of promises made earlier in the week by the Democrats.
I refer specifically to their promise that bills would go up on a government website 48 hours prior to voting on the bills so that the public would be able to review said bills. Of course, we’ve been told by the Obama administration, that this bill needed to be dealt with quickly to avert an economic catastrophe, so if I take them on face value I could excuse them for not giving the public time to read the bill…but this thing is just under 1100 pages and Congress members were given less than 15 hours to sift through the bill before voting on it.
Television screenshot of the stimulus bill
The fact of the matter is, as House Republican leader John Boehner said in Congress as he threw the bill on the floor, “not one member has read this”.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/JohnBoehnerUSStimulus.mp3] Download MP3
It hardly matters if the Democrats have a majority or not, the fact is that not a single person who voted on this bill, who voted to spend more than a trillion Australian dollars, read what they were voting to spend the money on.
As Congressman Mike Pence from Indiana said to Sean Hannity on his Friday show when asked if he had read the bill “Oh heavens no! [..] We didn’t have any more than twelve hours to look at this thing, and as Connie Hair of Human Events wrote this afternoon it wasn’t even put on the Internet in a searchable format.”
Ms. Hair elaborates in her article:
Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document — which people can search by “key words” and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into “pdf” files, which can be read but not searched.
Three of the four .pdf files had no text embedded, just images of the text, which did not permit text searches of the bill.
Congressman Pence told Hannity that the Republicans had staffers looking over the bill for problems, but there just was not enough time to read through it.
Analysts told the Associated Press that the stimulus package will not kick-start the economy, Brian Bethune from IHS Global Insight even went so far as to say that the way to make it more effective is with bigger tax cuts rather than more spending…which is exactly what the Republicans have been rallying for, exactly what Congressman Pence told Hannity, and exactly what the Democrats refused to do, instead throwing money at such wondrous pet-projects as green golf carts ($300 million), “state fiscal stabilisation” bailout ($39 billion incentive to mismanage states on the basis that the feds will fix it all up later), the Smithsonian Institution (not quite a pet-project, but $75 million for museums…not exactly an economy fixer) and abandoned mine sites ($650 million…talk about throwing money down a hole).
And if you think that this is just Republican sour grapes…well explain this to me: seven Democrats voted with the Republicans in the congress against this stimulus package. Clearly they weren’t comfortable with approving a bill without enough time to read it…or perhaps they were sounded out about the contents and just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a bill which throws so much money at things which won’t help the economy, at the expense of things which will.
And all of this after the series of tax cheats in (or almost in) the cabinet, and all of the lobbyists (of which we were promised there would be none) and Blagojevich, the man alleged to have attempted to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat, and Nancy Pelosi claiming that every American will lose their job one and a half times every month (see previous link).
I received this email from Maritz last night. My thoughts and prayers are with her mother at this time.
Dear to Mr. Samuel today,
I am writing today in the sadness of newses that Mother of Russia is in of the hospital with treatment doctors for after recent times of illness and many coughing and unwell times. Mother of Russia was to be go to doctor in weeks ago when did she of start in the feeling not well but was doing some of works for nice Mr. Vladimir and did say that she did want to be finishing of works before going to be see doctor.
It probably is not good for waiting as Mother had to be go in ambulance when the lovely old neighbour Mrs. Stroshlopcnefravinich Frorshnik did find of Mother in unconscious kitchen. Mrs. Frorshnik is lovely old lady who has been doing live of next door to Mother since time of childhood memories and was always boiling the pumpkin treats of when I was child. She did do ring of on tephlephone last night to be telling me of newses and to say that she is doing look after nice mouse Squeelivich who is my pet of living with Mother of Russia.
The doctor of hospital will be doing tephlephone call to me tomorrow or Tuesday for more newses which I am do hope will be of good and lovely.
I am hoping that day is much lovely to you.
From Maritz
Ms. Maritzkrozlavsky Throrglasnishozly
Former Prime Minister John Howard will receive an honorary doctorate from Bond University in Queensland today, although I can’t find details of what Mr. Howard will become an honorary doctor at this time.
John Howard, in my opinion, deserves a lot of credit for his mostly excellent four terms as Prime Minister, however I wonder if this particular doctorate is to do with his time as Prime Minister, or if it’s related to his long-term friendship of both Bond University and Chancellor Trevor C Rowe AM.
Regardless, I think the title of “doctor” a fitting tribute to a man who will go down in history as one of Australia’s best Prime Ministers.
Update: Bond University’s Acting Marketing & Communications Manager, Amanda Elms, was kind enough to send through some details about Mr. Howard’s award this morning. Unfortunately I was away from the computer at the time and as such was not able to update this blog post. Better late than never I suppose.
Former Prime Minister John Howard will receive the degree of Doctor of the University from Bond University Saturday in recognition of his long and distinguished service to Australia, his contribution to economic and social policy reform, and his support of a diversified higher education sector which recognised the valued contribution of non-government universities in Australia.
[..]
Bond University Vice Chancellor Professor Robert Stable said: “John Howard, through his policies, recognised and supported a more diverse higher education sector, which if you look at the North American example is critical in a world class education system.’’
A very well-deserved award. Congratulations Mr./Dr. Howard! End Update
The senate have approved the stimulus package by a margin of 30 votes to 28 (which means that 12 less senators voted on this version of the package than last night’s version of the package) after Senator Nick Xenophon managed to hold the package to ransom with a $900 million assistance package for the Murray-Darling basin.
The House of Representatives will pass the amended stimulus package shortly (probably around 4:30pm based on the House of Reps website). Update: Now passed end update
I still have a few issues with the package as it stands, however overall I support it as a once-off stimulus package. Hopefully it will achieve its goals, and we will be able to scrub the debt it causes in a quick and swift manner.
A couple hours ago, independent Senator Nick Xenophon joined the coalition in opposing the Rudd Government’s $42 billion economic stimulus package. Senator Xenophon’s move locked the vote at 35 votes for and 35 votes against the package, which means that it has been blocked.
But this isn’t good enough for Kevin Rudd who has decided that, if the Senate don’t vote the right way the first time, perhaps they will the second time around. He’s reintroducing the same legislation in the House of Representatives so that it can be debated in the Senate again tomorrow.
I don’t see how the stimulus package will be passed in its current form, so I can only assume that Mr. Rudd intends on pushing it through any way possible. If it fails to be passed this time, then he will be well on the way to a trigger for a double dissolution…and until that three month period is reached, he can just keep introducing the same bill over and over and over. It’s certainly the impression that he gave when he told the parliament that he will not be deterred from taking “whatever action is necessary” in the national economic interest.
If Mr. Rudd were to take this all the way to a double dissolution, it would certainly be a very bold election promise: “Vote for me and I’ll give you $950…err $900 due to the amendments.” It would probably be very popular, and it would certainly test Malcolm Turnbull’s ability to both effectively argue against the stimulus package and make the electorate like his own policies.
Whatever happens, we’re in for some interesting times in the near future.
Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
An irreversible recession? A recession that lasts forever? Is this really the same man who ushered in a new era of hope and not fear only a few short weeks ago? He’s been such a positive person, and now he’s trying to scare everyone with a recession which lasts forever…well I suppose it is a remote possibility, but he’d need lessons from Robert Mugabe first…and even then the recession will end eventually.
every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs
In fact, we have video of her saying it:
As far as I can tell she only used “500 million” as a monthly figure once, but it hardly matters because there is a fundamental flaw here, regardless of whether it’s a monthly or a static figure…have you spotted it yet?
The population of the US is just under 307 million people. That’s every man, woman and child…every retired person, every baby, every housewife, every invalid…everyone. There are not even 300 million people working in the US, but somehow they will shed half a billion jobs every month.
And then, well there are plenty of articles that I can’t be bothered digging up right now, but this sound bite from the Sean Hannity show neatly sums up the comical tax problems plaguing the Democrat officials:
At this rate, it would probably be more likely for the US to have a permanent recession if the Obama administration are allowed to touch the economy!
As much as I still think the Rudd government’s stimulus package is a good idea, albeit with a couple minor problems, after sitting in on a couple hours of senate proceedings today as they debated the bills which make up the stimulus package, I am left with a few points of contention.
It was clear from the moment that Kevin Rudd started going on about how any delay in passing the bills was an afront to the funding of schools, rather than an afront to our economic recovery, that Kevin was trying to produce better headlines than anything which could be unearthed by the parliament in a comprehensive review of the bills. Based on the sheer size of the stimulus package, which is the largest non-budget spend by the Australian Government in history, if there was nothing hiding in the pages of the bills then Kevin would have copped the delay on the chin, knowing that such complicated legislation deserves to be debated…a point his side of the parliament were keen to make when the Work Choices bill was passed in about two weeks.
Anyway, on with the points of contention.
It would appear that somewhere in these bills, the Rudd government plans on increasing the government’s maximum allowable debt from $75 billion to $200 billion. This isn’t to say that they will run out and spend up as soon as the bills go through, but the fact that they even want this extra allowable debt is a worry.
From my perspective, it either means that the Rudd government think things are going to get a whole lot worse despite their stimulus package, or they are planning a splurge in the next budget. Either way, a $200 billion dollar debt, regardless of how it is racked up, is just not acceptable. One of the reasons that we are in as good a position as we are when compared to the rest of the world, is that we have run federal budget surpluses for so long.
$200 billion is just not on. That bit of the bill needs to be removed before the stimulus is passed.
The coalition senators presented an interesting proposal to the senate. They believe that a better stimulus for small business than some of the incentives which have been put forward (the rebates for various expensive items, rebates which the businesses won’t see until July 1 or later, and which they can only get if they spend money now, at a time when their cash flow is poor and they probably can’t afford to spend the money) is having the federal government pay some of the superannuation contribution (I think they said two of the current nine percent compulsory super contribution which, to clarify, would mean 7% paid by employer and 2% paid by government) for businesses with 20 employees or less, for the next two years. Effectively this frees up money for the business to spend as it needs.
I agree with the idea, and it would certainly be more helpful than the nutty “rebates on computers which cost more than $2000” (if the public service were buying $2000+ desktop computers for desk jockeys I’d be furious at the waste of money…I don’t know why the government expects small business to waste money like that), although I still believe that the idea of reallocating the cash injections and small business incentives so that they become smaller cash injections for individuals as well as cash injections for small business would be a good idea. Perhaps we could reallocate the $3.9 billion “house insulation for all, so that we can cut greenhouse gas emissions” plan (which apparently won’t cut greenhouse emissions at all) in to the “superannuation contribution” fund.
The next things on my list are observations which aren’t about the proposal, but about the odd behaviour of Labor to date on this one.
Firstly, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard did not vote on the bill when it passed through the house of representatives at 5am. Sure, they’re busy people, but parliament sits for long hours when incredibly important legislation is being discussed. For the leader and deputy leader of the party which are vigorously supporting the bill to not stay and take part in the vote is an insult to the parliament and to the constituents (I was going to use the word “voters” but that could have been confusing in that context). It does make me wonder what they will do if the legislation doesn’t pass through the senate…will they try to wriggle out of trouble by saying that they “didn’t vote for it, and by the way here’s a smaller package which we’ve already shown to Malcolm who seems to like it”?
I’m also amazed that not a single Labor senator has put themself on the list of speakers for this bill. It could be a tactic whereby they just listen to the ideas of everyone else and then the party room make amendments based on these suggestions for senators to tack on to the bills, or it could be a simple case of “how dare you block our bill, and how dare you waste our time by rambling for days on end in parliament when we could have moved on to other topics”.
I’d suggest that it’s more likely to be the latter, although if the numbers start looking particularly dicey, then it may become the former for emergency purposes. It’s such a pity that Kevin has decided today to only listen to the minor parties (and even then, not act on their suggestions) though…especially when the coalition make up a lot more numbers than the minor parties, meaning that more people voted for, and are represented by, the coalition than the minor parties.
Ultimately though, I do still support the plan, although I would be happier with it if there were a few amendments.
If I’m not at work when the senate next debate the stimulus bills, then I intend on watching the senate webstream and “live blogging” as the debate rages.
I have now had some time to give Kevin Rudd’s latest stimulus package some thought and debate its merits and some of my opinions with a few people, and come to some conclusions.
On the whole, I think the stimulus package is good idea and it should work, but there are a couple things which I would change. The main thing which makes the plan a good one is that it throws money at the free market to enable it to do what it does best…decide where money needs to be spent in order to keep itself operating. It would appear to me that the idea behind the package is to make the economy tick over in much the same way that it would if these were normal circumstances.
The focus of the package is both on short term cash injections, and medium term job promotion.
I was very surprised to hear Kevin Rudd reintroduce the “education revolution” phrase with this stimulus package, but if this is what he meant by “education revolution” then I think the idea has merit, even if I wouldn’t personally call it an “education revolution”. Throwing money at schools, to spend on infrastructure is really a plan for the medium term. It basically gives money to schools to then give to private enterprise, so that they can then build various things, and employ labourers to do the work, which in turn assists the industries which supply the construction and maintenance industries by creating more demand for their products.
The same can be said for other infrastructure programs.
The short term cash injections come in the form of payments to individuals with many individuals set to receive $950. The government are asking people to spend that money, but as they are giving out cash payments (or, more likely, deposits in to taxpayers’ bank accounts) it is clear that they understand that not everyone will spend the money straight away, and they are fine with this. If they weren’t fine with it, then they would be giving everyone Visa Debit cards loaded with $950 and a one month time limit, after which the government gets the unused money back and spends it on other stuff.
Personally I won’t be spending the money straight away, simply because my circumstances dictate that my best use of the money is to kill off my existing debt (which I could do with the $950) which would then allow me to save money to put towards domestic travel. I haven’t been able to shake this debt for a very long time, so rather than blowing $950 on stuff that I don’t actually need right now and contending with this debt for the foreseeable future, I would be better off killing my debt now, and spending stimulus package number three (aka the end of financial year tax return) without keeping myself in a debt that I would still have to pay off.
This fits my circumstances, and probably doesn’t fit the circumstances of the majority of people. The bottom line on this is that the stimulus package is designed to support the free market economy, and in a free market, it is up to each individual to spend money as they see fit. Kevin Rudd quite rightly expects that most people will spend their stimulus package…most people will probably see it is a bit of welcome relief…I know that I do, but I probably have a different way of spending it.
I still fit within the spirit in which the money is given, as I am bringing forward the spending of money. Without the stimulus package, I would probably be saving until a bit after my tax return in order to wipe that debt. Instead I will be able to free up that money straight away, clearing a debt from my bank’s ledger, and allowing them to either have less debt, or to reallocate the funds which were leant to me.
The one thing which I do see as a significant problem is the bizarre incentives being given to small business to spend money, in the form of rebates. This doesn’t help NOW, and is hardly likely to make business spend money which they don’t currently have.
I was debating this point with a friend last night and they had the idea of scrapping the personal cash injections in favour of cash injections to small business, on the basis that 80% (a figure which I haven’t had a chance to verify, but sounds about right) of money is spent on business-to-business transactions, and the other 20% is consumer-to-business.
I don’t agree with scrapping the personal cash injections entirely, but what I would suggest is taking the large chunk of money which has been allocated to personal cash injections, combine it with the chunk of money which has been allocated to small business rebates, and split it between cash injections for personal citizens and small businesses. The only condition I would place on this is that the injections for small business would need to be under a time-limited scheme, where the money must be spent, probably within a two month period.
In this way, you would be attacking the slowdown on two fronts, the retail end, and the wholesale/B2B (business to business) end, which I think would be a more effective way of kicking the economy in to gear than only throwing money at the retail end in the short term.
I do have one other minor concern with the package, and that is that, due to the sheer size of it, it’s a one-off stimulus. This can not be repeated. It is therefore a gamble on taking the national budget in to debt, on the basis that whilst we tide ourselves over with a stimulus package, the rest of the world economy will start to recover. It’s a risk, but I think it is worth it. Even if the gamble fails, at least it will help to ensure that our economy doesn’t suffer anywhere near as badly as some overseas will and are.
On the very bright side, the main reason that I believe this will work, is that it flies in the face of Kevin Rudd’s summer holiday essay about ending capitalism. By its very nature, this stimulus package is supporting capitalism and the free market…it says “here’s some money, you know how best to spend it, go forth and do as you see fit”. It doesn’t have any of the bizarre “limit incomes because money shouldn’t go to the people who are in charge” directives that the Obama administration are supporting and is, on the whole, one of the best policies that I have seen from the Rudd government. It’s a tad rough around the edges, but so is every bit of legislation at first. A bit of massaging by the senate and it should be good, as long as the Greens don’t hijack it with their own “but Obama is doing this in the US, we should follow him” agenda.
And on that note, I’m off to Parliament House. There’s senate massaging to watch!
I’ve just checked through a bunch of news sources, and I can only assume that either no journalist has bothered to check the details, or the government’s papers, which Kevin Rudd claimed the answers could be seen in during his speech, don’t have the answer.
Millions of Australians are also set to benefit from $12.7 billion worth of tax bonuses and one off payments to low and middle-income households, farmers, single-income families and students.
Those earning up to $80,000 are eligible for a tax bonus of $950, while those earning between $80,000 and $90,000 will receive $600 and those earning between $90,000 and $100,000 will receive $300.
The Government estimate almost 10 million Australians will be eligible for the bonuses.
A cash payment of $950 will also be given to single-income families, farmers facing hardship, parents with children heading back to school and students and unemployed people returning to study.
The cash payments will be released next month and the bonuses from April.
The Government says the cash payments are immediate measures to support jobs and strengthen growth during the global recession.
Question 1: At what point in time are these annualised income figured being derived? I assume that it would have to be June 30 last year, which would be the latest reliable figures which the government have to work with.
Question 2: Assuming June 30 to be the date for calculations, are the calculations based on the entire 2007/2008 financial year, or the pay week/fortnight/month leading up to the end of the financial year?
Question 3: The unemployment rate is rising, but not everyone who is unemployed can be bothered wasting time going through Centrelink’s tediously slow application and ongoing “we need to check up on you” processes when it is often simpler to just go and find a job. With this as the case, the Centrelink figures are not necessarily a true indication of the people who are actually unemployed at this very moment. People who are unemployed are almost certainly making less money right now than they did on June 30…how do you take this in to consideration when deciding how much to pay them?
Question 4: A more specific example: I was employed on June 30, I was not employed for parts of July and August, I was then employed from August through until December, I am again unemployed, however I am awaiting official confirmation of the starting date for a new job which will probably be next week. At the times where I was employed, I probably pushed the household income slightly over 80K, obviously the household income was a long way under 80K when I wasn’t employed, and when I start work again the household income will probably be just under 80K. How much does my household get from the stimulus? Edit 1: It looks like this package is being paid to individuals rather than to households, although it’s difficult to see that from the ABC article which refers to “one off payments to low and middle-income households”. As such, my example doesn’t make much sense any more as I never personally was being paid 80K, although there was one pay week where, if my pay was extrapolated out to an annualised amount, I would have been earning about 120K, which would have invalidated me for the payment. As such, my question still stands under the changed wording of “how much do I get from the stimulus?” End Edit
Question 5: When I bothered Centrelink briefly to discuss my options, they wanted to call me “independent” because of the amount of income I have derived. Does this effectively make me a household unto myself for the purposes of the stimulus? Edit 2: Question retracted, see not above for reason. End Edit
Question 6: Working on the assumption that “household” is defined by the property boundary, how do you distribute the stimulus when there are three adults living in the household? Edit 3: Question retracted, see not above for reason. End Edit
Question 7: Do you have an actual date for the payments?
I could probably think of more, but that will do for now.
I’ll need some time to digest the rest of the stimulus package before thinking aloud about it on this blog.
Yesterday there was a protest about the Northern Territory intervention which was held outside the High Court (the protest that is, not the intervention), but I got the date wrong and as such missed my opportunity to antagonise the protesters with “Support the intervention” signs.
Today there was some “let’s form a human ring around parliament house to stop global warming” protest. I remember hearing about the protest a week or two ago but didn’t take note of the date. Pity, I could have annoyed them with “climate change is natural” signs and, if I’d really been on the ball, one-page fact sheets outlining why the changes in our climate are perfectly natural…I would have had fun producing those fact sheets, and my use of paper and ink would have been of more use to the economy than the protest.
Oh well, the good thing about protests like these is that they will keep happening, and I will get my chance again. Oh, and listening to Sean Hannity talking about the tax cheats and the lobbyists in the Obama administration (Obama promised to not have any lobbyists) this morning on KXNT Las Vegas was much more interesting than any session of “antagonise the global warmers” could have been, although probably not quite as satisfying.
A [man/woman] broke the window of a [insert location here] childcare centre with a [insert object here] when [he/she] arrived to find the building locked, the lights out and [his/her] tiny [son/daughter] trapped inside.
A woman broke the window of a Darwin childcare centre with a brick when she arrived to find the building locked, the lights out and her tiny son trapped inside.
Yula Williams, 30, said she could hear her eight-month-old baby Xavier “screaming and crying”.
“It made me terrified to know that my son was inside the centre, locked and in the dark,” she said.
Ms Williams had dropped her son off at the centre in the Darwin suburb of Wagaman around 8am (CST) on Tuesday and went to work.
She had dropped her car off at a local mechanic and arranged for one of her cousins to collect her son from the centre before it closed at 6pm (CST). But when she arrived home later that night her son was not at the house.
“It was just a mother’s instinct that I went back to the childcare centre and looked around,” she said.
Ms Williams arrived at the centre shortly before 6pm but staff had already left the building. After scanning all the the security screens the frantic mother climbed the back of the building to call Xavier’s name through elevated slats.”I couldn’t hear him from the outside but when I walked around and called through the vents to the bedrooms I heard him scream,” she told ABC radio in Darwin.
Desperate to get to her tiny son, Ms Williams then picked up a brick from the garden bed and smashed it through a window.
[..]
Ms Williams said that while she could understand the misunderstanding with her relative over the pickup arrangements, she could not understand how the centre had not called her to let her know that no-one had come to collect her son.
Police said they were continuing to conduct investigations into the incident.
I think Ms. Williams summed it up with the statement that she “could not understand how the centre had not called her to let her know that no-one had come to collect her son”, and it’s completely beyond me how they managed to lock up with a child still on the premises…surely the register would have told them that there was still a child in the centre, even if they couldn’t see him.
And with the publicity that stories just like this one have received in recent times, one does have to wonder how long it will be before incompetence is seriously considered as the reason for these stuff ups.
