Howard 明年的Tax Cut - 这次和下次的涨息 = -＄10

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22727738-5013592,00.html

JOHN Howard nominated his favourite family yesterday - and sold most voters short.

No prizes for guessing that the household sits near the middle of the income ladder. The father is working full-time on $50,000, the mother is in a part-time job earning $20,000, and they have a mortgage of $300,000.

The Prime Minister didn't go into this detail. But a combined income of $70,000 is what he had in mind when he argued that Wednesday's interest rate rise would barely touch the sides of his generous election tax cuts.

"(This) year's tax cuts were worth about $80 a month," he said. "The tax cuts to which we are committed from the first of July next year, if we're re-elected, are worth about $120 a month.

"I think it's important to make the observation, when you're looking at the impact of increases in mortgage interest rates, to set the $40 or $50 a month (increase) off against those taxation cuts."

The problem with this numbers game is it concedes the obvious: that an interest rate hike does cancel a tax cut.

Howard's figuring was not entirely upfront.

The family he nominated has the father in line for a tax cut of $82.70 a month and the mother $37.20 a month. Yes, the $120 a month headline is accurate.

But this is not a mainstream example. More than half the nation's home-borrowing households won't be seeing tax cuts of this order from the Coalition's election package.

The median income for a household with a mortgage was $81,600 at the census in August last year. Assuming wages grow at a modest clip of 4 per cent a year, that translates to combined income of $88,000 next year.

The respective tax cuts here are $49.60 for dad and $37.20 for mum. Round that up for pollie speak, and it comes to $90 a month - $30 less than Howard's example.

Now you see why the PM wouldn't go to the median home borrower for his case study - Wednesday's rate rise wipes out roughly half the 2008 tax cut promised to voters.

Remember, the money markets are predicting at least one more hike to come. That would add a further $40 to $50 a month to the mortgage burden in December, or perhaps next February, based on the PM's sums.

Voters, repeat after me: take one election tax cut worth $90 and subtract two interest rate hikes, worth a combined $80 to $100. What does that leave you?

The only consolation for Kevin Rudd is that the tax cuts he copied won't, strictly speaking, be adding to inflationary pressures next year. The Reserve Bank has just nipped that stimulus in the bud.