Name: Senate Economics Legislation Committee (part 2 of 2)
Uploaded: 2026-11-06T03:50:00+00:00
Duration: 7920 s
Description: Official Recording of Senate Committee Proceedings from the Australian Parliament

00:00 - 00:39

Speaker 2

Tom, I just want to start by reading out a quote from a US tax expert, David Weisbach, I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but it's out of Associate Professor James's submission and it is a bit of a cracker in my view. So, here's the quote. "Tax planning, all tax planning, produces nothing of value. Nothing is gained by finding new ways to turn ordinary income into capital gain, to push a gain offshore, or to generate losses. Tax planning is actually far worse than that, it is almost always positively bad for society, it is worse than worthless."

00:39 - 00:42

Speaker 1

Have you got a reflection on that?

00:42 - 01:23

Speaker 4

Yeah, it's an interesting quote, and sort of thinking like an economist, what we do is we pay some of the smartest people out of uni, we pay them very big salaries not to add to Australia, but basically to work out how to funnel rich people's income through loopholes and minimize their tax. Now, at best that has no value at all to society. But, you know, if you want to look at it in a society and overall in a productivity way, we're taking people who could be super productive, who are super smart in other areas, and we're putting them in this role where they're not adding to the productivity of Australia.

01:23 - 01:27

Speaker 5

So, yes, it has a double whammy.

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