Dividend imputation or low company tax?

Recent OECD data offer limited support for the proposition that Australia’s company tax rate could be cut substantially with little or no loss of tax revenue. Treasury-type analysis suggests otherwise: the headline rate could be cut to 20 per cent if abolishing dividend imputation were used to finance this. But this type of exercise relies on debateable assumptions, and imputation mitigates other idiosyncrasies of our tax system. Accordingly, abolition of imputation should await a cut in our top marginal personal tax rate along with a transition to back-end taxation of most superannuation accounts.