Tax Design Best Practices

They haven't said that, but what they have said is they reckon the tax system needs to be designed in such a way that it makes it easier for governments to lift tax rates should governments need more money. So Inland Revenue and the Treasury have been ringing the alarm bells over the fact our population is ageing. We basically aren't projected to have enough tax coming in to pay for... you know all the the looming costs around health care superannuation that type of thing so they say that they assume that in the future governments will fix this governments haven't been fixing it but they reckon at some point they will have to fix it but they don't know if governments will fix it by cutting spending or by hiking taxes so they say because we don't know what the future holds we should set up the tax system in such a way that we can hike rates should it be required. So that's why they haven't said how much they think GST should be increased by, but they do say if governments do that, they recommend offering a cash transfer to low-income earners because of course if GST rate goes up, that really hits low-income earners disproportionately hard.