The DLP proposes the Family Tax Package.
Benefits: Real choice
- The Family Tax Package gives families real choice on whether to use child-care or their own family to provide care.
- Gives stay-at-home parents a real choice and allows them to care for their children at home, which has been recognised as the healthiest for both child and parent.
- The current welfare system forces the non-waged parent into part-time, low paid positions that return little or no financial reward when child-care is taken into account. This package removes market distortion on child-care facilities that are expensive and heavily subsidised by taxpayers.
- Youth and student allowances could also be taken as concessions allowing parents to have children of differing age gaps.
- Baby bonuses would still be available to families that provide home child-care.
The DLP believes that families earning so little as to require welfare should not be taxed. Families that earn enough not to seek welfare should not be on welfare but receive tax concessions instead.
The current Family Tax A and Family Tax B churns (collecting of taxes to redistribute back on many occasions to the same people being taxed) about 19.5 billion dollars a year and does very little to actually assist parents of young families. The current cost of child-care in Australia is about $6250 per child, not including the churn cost related to processing these payments.
The DLP believes that the current tax free threshold is totally inadequate and needs to be lifted to $12,500. Under the DLP family tax package, the tax free threshold could be shared between the husband, wife and the children that are in the family.
Example of a common family:
In a family of 4, with 2 adults and 2 pre-school children.
These figures are based pre-Carbon Tax and based on past and predicated expenditure in 2011/2012.
The working or waged parent of the family would qualify for a tax free threshold of $24,500 (being the combined tax free threshold of both parents.
The non-waged parent (or part-time parent) would also receive further tax concession of $6250 per child that is currently being churned through the welfare system.
That means the family would be able to earn $37,500 before tax would be payable, adding thousands of dollars into the family on a weekly basis and removing the need of the very expensive welfare churn system currently employed.
Should families be burdened with the new carbon tax, then the tax free threshold would be $18,500 per adult bringing the figure to $47,500 that families would have to earn before paying tax.
Youth and other allowances could also become tax concessions and giving families real choice on how they live and raise their children.
Families not earning enough to benefit from the new family tax package would remain under the current system with access to existing Family Tax A and Family tax B.
Mothers wishing to remain on the current system could continue to claim the government’s maternity leave allowance, and would still retain access to family tax payments. After returning to work after the 13 weeks they would still have access to current subsidised child-care payments.
The DLP believes that our children are the future of our nation. Families provide the ideal environment to build and nurture them, and every effort should be made to make the raising and caring of children as stress free as possible. Future workforces don’t just appear; they have to be raised, nurtured and educated. The DLP believes that the traditional family model best suits this purpose.