With the opportunity to use windfall gains in revenue to begin the fix of structural issues in the economy dealing with the low paid and essential services, the government instead has thrown money at voters in the hopes of re-election.

The Centre’s Fiscal Director, Greg Jericho, goes through the budget numbers and finds that despite predictions of once again strong wage growth, the underlying assumptions are overly optimistic and would even still leave workers worse off than they were in the middle of 2019 until 2025.

The budget forecasts are for strong growth now, while the money is being pumped out, but once that ends we find yourself back with the same middling growth we had prior to the pandemic.

And while there will be the usual attempts to suggest better wages growth is just around the corner and those on low-to-middle income earners are benefitting the most, we should watch out for the almost guaranteed spin around tax cuts. 

The Centre’s Fiscal Policy director, Greg Jericho, notes in his Guardian Australia column that the low-to-middle income tax offset (LMITO) was meant to be discarded when the Stage 2 tax cuts were introduced. However because doing so would have delivered no net benefit to people earning below $90,000 the government extended the offset in the 2020 budget. 

It extended the offset again last year claiming it was providing tax relief to “10 million low-and-middle income earners” despite it actually doing nothing other than keeping the tax rate of those workers at the same level.

We can expect the same to occur next week. 

Budget spin is always a sight to behold, but we are now at the point where income earners are being told they are getting a tax cut that does not actually see them pay any less tax.

Meanwhile the Stage 3 tax cut that will deliver a cut of up to 4.5% for those earning $200,000 remains in place.

Spin and imaginary tax cuts for some; truly excessive tax cuts for others.