Melbourne Institute Report on the 2004 Federal Budget

The Melbourne Institute's 2004 Budget Report, focuses on the effects of the Family Tax Benefit package and the income tax cuts, the two central features of the budget released by the Coalition in 2004. In this budget the sum of the income tax cuts to be provided over the next two financial years is estimated at about $3.2 billion. If you add the value of the increased family tax benefits this increases to $6 billion.

In this report we provide our analysis of the distribution of the tax cuts and family tax benefits across the Australian distribution of income. In addition, the labour supply effects of the different policy components are explored for the separate groups. These effects are compared to alternative policies that could have been introduced at the same cost.

Project leader : Professor Peter Dawkins

Researchers : Dr Hielke Buddelmeyer and Dr Guyonne Kalb

This project was carried out in May 2004.

This project has been completed. The results of this project appeared in an article in The Australian on 14 May 2004.

Brief report (pdf 96 Kb)