That is a brilliant little interactive graphic!
Marty: GST goes to fund State government expenditures. These include hospitals, justice (police, courts, jails), roads, utilities (water / electricity, public education, public housing, and managing agricultural and natural resources.
Rates go to your local council in exchange for rubbish collection and disposal, public space maintenance (parks, recreation facilities, libraries) and planning (ensuring development on land minimally harms others).
Income tax goes to the Federal government, and the graphic agent_clone linked shows exactly where that money goes.
Check this one too, similar but with dollar amounts for your income:
http://www.wheredomytaxesgo.com.au/.
From the Budget, the top 20 programs are:
Revenue assistance to State and Territory governments: $54.9b (13.2%);
Income support for seniors: $42.1b (10.1%);
Medicare: $20.3b (4.9%);
Family tax benefit: $19.3b (4.6%);
Income Support for People with Disability: $16.9b (4.1%);
Assistance to the States for public hospitals: $15.1b (3.6%);
Job seeker income support: $10.2b (2.5%);
Residential and flexible care: $9.5b (2.3%);
Pharmaceuticals etc: $9.4b (2.3%);
Non government schools - national support: $9.3b (2.2%);
Income support for carers: $7.6b (1.8%);
Public sector superannuation: $7.5b (1.8%);
Commonwealth Grants Scheme: $6.5b (1.6%);
Private health insurance: $6.3b (1.5%);
Fuel tax credits scheme: $6.3b (1.5%);
Defence - management of capability acquisition: $6.2b (1.5%);
Defence - Army capabilities: $6.0b (1.5%);
Defence - management of capability sustainment: $5.9b (1.4%);
Parents' income support: $5.3b (1.3%);
Government Schools National Support: $5.1b (1.2%);
Subtotal $269.9b (65.1%) <- direct from Budget, may not be sum of above figures due to rounding.
Other programs: $144.9b (34.9%).
Total: $414.8b.
Looks like administering the Federal government costs ~$23.2b (5.6%). Thanks to the $8b given to the RBA, which is included under this heading, the Government can claim it will be cutting the costs of administering the Government by 1/3 from the 2013-2014 year's $34.2b. Of course, take out the confounding $8.8b grant, and last year's cost would have been $25.4b - turning the Government's fiscal hatchet job into a more modest 9% haircut with a side of ear.
Even within these programs you can see that job seekers do not make up a substantial proportion of the Budget. We spend 4x as much on pensioners directly and almost 2x as much for family tax benefit. We spend 50% more for support for the disabled.
Here's an interesting one. According to the detailed breakdown in Budget Paper 2, the line item under Employment: "Stronger participation incentives for job seekers under 30" is attached to an
increased cost of only $21m this financial year, but skyrocketing to $152.2m in the 2015-2016 financial year, and bigger in subsequent years. The line item under Social Services: "Stronger participation incentives for job seekers under 30" shows they figure they'll be saving $293m this year, and $582.2m next year.
So it looks like they're expecting a return of 93c in the dollar by changing welfare eligibility for jobseekers under 30 this year, but that drops to 74c in the dollar next year. I wonder why the change is so drastic?
Either way, you're looking at a net gain to the budget in the 2015-2016 year of $430m. That's equivalent to 0.1% of the Budget.
Other interesting changes in welfare:
They're saving $218m by removing grandfathering for student start-up scholarships. This was a one-off payment around $1000 paid twice a year in February and August to eligible students receiving Youth Allowance while studying. The program was already being phased out and replaced by allowing students to take out a Student Start-Up Loan which is basically the same thing, except the balance gets added to the student's HECS debt. I'm actually surprised they didn't do that before. Either way, the savings fall off dramatically after 2 years as people would have ceased to receive the scholarship anyway by graduating (or dropping out).
Saving $132m, increasing by ~$120m more for each of the next three years, by "maintaining eligibility thresholds for Australian Government payments for three years". This just means freezing indexing to CPI for income and asset tests for various non-pension payments (pensions will also have their eligibility thresholds frozen, but not until 2017 - can't upset the olds before the next election, can we?).
Saving $26m, increasing to $183m next year, by increasing the eligible age to receive Youth Allowance and Sickness Allowance from 22 years to 24 years. I'm fairly certain that this means the age at which you are deemed to be independent from your parents. If you are below that age, you can prove independence by holding a job for an average of 30 hours a week for 18 months out of a 2 year period, or by providing evidence that it is not suitable for you to live at home (abuse, neglect, etc). If you cannot prove independence, your parents' income and assets are taken into consideration when assessing whether you are eligible for a payment. The main threshold is $48,837 - for every dollar over that of combined parental income, your Youth Allowance is reduced by 20c. There are several different rates of payment depending on whether a person applying for Youth Allowance is living at home or not, and if over 18 or not, or has children. The kind of person affected by this change is a person over 18, either at the parental home or not. If at the parental home the payment reaches zero when combined parental income reaches $84,301; if living away from the parental home, $102,709. By increasing the age at which a person is deemed independent, people seeking to claim Youth Allowance aged 22 and 23 will more frequently be granted only a partial payment due to the effect of parental income - even if the parents and the child have nothing to do with each other and live on opposite sides of the country, depending on how strict that "unreasonable to live at home" clause is.
Saving $398.8m this year and ~$720m for each of three years after that, by freezing indexation of Family Tax Benefit.
Saving $377.4m in the 2015-16 year (and increasing slightly after that year) by cutting the threshold for receipt of FTB-B from $150k to $100k. Now there's a good idea! Long overdue. I believe I suggested it myself in a previous post.
Saving $410.0m in the 2015-16 year (and ongoing in future years) by cutting FTB end-of-year supplements.
Saving $87.2m - scaling up to $1.58b by 2018! - by phasing out FTB-B payments to parents of children once the youngest child reaches 6yo. Interestingly, they've put in a 2-year transitional period so current recipients whose youngest kids are 6-18 can plan for losing it after two years instead of immediately. Another interesting measure that doesn't bite until next election season.
Saving ~$125m each year by only paying the Large Family Supplement of FTB for each child from the 4th onwards - currently the 3rd onwards. Currently $12.04 per fortnight per qualifying child, by the way.
Saving $220m this year, increasing by $15m a year, by cutting the Seniors Supplement - a payment of $876.20 to singles or $1320.80 total to a couple per year, split across four quarterly payments. This was available to people of pension age who were not receiving a pension and whose income was below $50,000 (single) or $80,000 (couple total).
Saving $41.3m this year, increasing by ~$45m a year, by ceasing indexation of the Clean Energy Supplement, a small supplement paid to recipients of all social welfare payments.
Saving $74m this year, increasing to ~$160m a year in subsequent years, by cutting the Aged Care Payroll Tax Supplement, the terms of which are too complex for me to figure out at the moment, but basically existed to offset payroll tax costs for residential aged care providers (presumably because employment of skilled carers is their primary expense and the resulting payroll tax was too high?)
There's a lot of indexation freezes that make up the changes to welfare. Major exceptions include the cut of the Seniors Supplement, which is arguably justified by the fact that people who receive it are people who have too much wealth or income to qualify for the aged pension so are not really needy; massive cuts to FTB, especially that elimination of FTB-B for parents whose youngest child is 6, once that takes effect in 2018. At that point FTB looks like the whole program will have been cut by ~$2.8-3b out of a total of $19.3b - Around 15%.
It looks like jobseeker welfare is being cut by around 10% overall - though of course the burden of most of that cut is borne by jobseekers under 30.
Any thoughts? The Budget papers really are quite interesting, if your eyes don't glaze over from the figures and bullshit. =)
