Stephen Kirchner draws my attention to a Galaxy/Courier-Mail poll of 800 Queenslanders that:

found 55 per cent of respondents would prefer the proposed tax cuts to be delivered as extra payments to their superannuation fund. This included a majority of Labor and Coalition supporters.

Only 38 per cent of people wanted the money upfront through lower taxes.

That’s a very similar result to a Newspoll last May, in which a supplementary tax & spend question warning respondents that tax cuts would be inflationary saw opinion on tax cuts shift from 66% in favour to 33%, with the proportion against going from 19% to 53%.

The public seems to have paid a suprising amount of attention to the macroeconomic debates over the role of fiscal policy in inflation and interest rate outcomes.

There is, however, an important difference between this week’s Galaxy poll and last year’s Newspoll. As Stephen notes, people could get the tax cuts and voluntarily put the money into super. He suggests that the logic might be as follows:
Continue reading “Tax and super” →