Electric 4WD?

[colnick]

I'm happy to debate on this forum policies which relate directly to fishing. Negative gearing and franking credit refunds do not fall into that category. Debating them here can only create unnecessary ill-feeling.

[4liters]

Yes the original poster was.

Politics are a part of life. Fishing has become much more political in recent years and will continue to do so.

Do you really think ALP's franking credits policy is a good idea?

While I feel for anyone with a small shareholding and not much other income, the vast majority of the money paid out as franking credit refunds goes to a very small number of extremely high networth people. There's a $8 million self managed super fund I work on that gets $120,000 of franking credit refunds, they are lovely clients but they're the last people on earth that should be receiving government handouts.

[frozenpod]

While I feel for anyone with a small shareholding and not much other income, the vast majority of the money paid out as franking credit refunds goes to a very small number of extremely high networth people. There's a $8 million self managed super fund I work on that gets $120,000 of franking credit refunds, they are lovely clients but they're the last people on earth that should be receiving government handouts.

That is the precisely the problem but ALP's policy is not addressing the problem.

Basically rich people can use super to avoid paying tax.

What they should do is put a cap ie limit on the maximum you can have in super that the incentives, lower tax etc apply.

ALP wont increase the amount of tax they have to pay as they can restructure making the policy mute.

Whilst those with much smaller incomes and smaller investments will end up paying tax that they shouldn't having to.

[4liters]

While I feel for anyone with a small shareholding and not much other income, the vast majority of the money paid out as franking credit refunds goes to a very small number of extremely high networth people. There's a $8 million self managed super fund I work on that gets $120,000 of franking credit refunds, they are lovely clients but they're the last people on earth that should be receiving government handouts.

That is the precisely the problem but ALP's policy is not addressing the problem.

Basically rich people can use super to avoid paying tax.

What they should do is put a cap ie limit on the maximum you can have in super that the incentives, lower tax etc apply.

ALP wont increase the amount of tax they have to pay as they can restructure making the policy mute.

Whilst those with much smaller incomes and smaller investments will end up paying tax that they shouldn't having to.

That already exists, you can only transfer a maximum of $1.6 million into a pension stream which means the rest of the money in the fund stays in accumulation and any income it generates is taxed (albeit at a lower rate of 15%). There's also an additional tax high income earners pay on super contributions.

[frozenpod]

15% is a lot better than what they would normally be paying ie 45% which is why super is used.

Whilst the policy might look like a good idea it doesn't stop people restructuring so they only pay 15%.

A limit needs to be put in place so they are paying full tax not 15% regardless of how they choose to structure there super investment.

[Sebb]

Copied from ABC News : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-10/ ... t/11078464

Can electric vehicles tow?
Experts told Fact Check that it was incorrect to suggest that electric vehicles generally did not have towing capacity.

Most electric vehicles have plenty of pulling power, reflected in their high output of torque.

A number of electric vehicles currently on the Australian market (and coming in 2019) generate power not too dissimilar to a standard petrol-fuelled vehicle. These models produce between 300 and 600Nm of torque.

The petrol-based Hyundai Kona produces a maximum output of 180Nm and a braked towing capacity of 1,300 kilograms, depending on fuel-tank capacity. In comparison, the Hyundai Kona electric produces 395Nm of torque but is not engineered for towing.

Professor John Andrew, of RMIT's School of Engineering, said there was no reason why electric vehicles would not be able to tow.

The "electric traction put in a vehicle — depending on how it's sized — can pull just as much as a petrol engine," he said.

He told Fact Check that a vehicle's towing capacity was dependent on what it was designed to do.

"What I think is happening is the current generation of electric cars have been designed to get a range that is as high as possible on a single charge and they have not been designed for pulling trailers or caravans and things like that.

"But there's no reason why — in the future — if this was a requirement, that vehicles couldn't be designed to do that. There's nothing in the technology that stops you. There's nothing inherent in the technology that rules that out."

Power shift
Max torque (Nm)* Towing capacity (Kg)
Audi e-tron : 664 1,800
Jaguar I-PACE : 696 750
Tesla Model X P100D : 967 2,250
Tesla Model 3 : TBA TBA
Mercedes EQC 400 4Matic : 760 1,800
Second generation Nissan Leaf : 320 N/A
Renault Kangoo Z.E : 226 322
Renault Zoe : 220 N/A
BMW i3 : 250 N/A
Kia e-Niro : 395 Not recommended
Hyundai Kona Electric Highlander : 395 N/A
Hyundai Ioniq : 295 N/A

[frozenpod]

Just following on from the franking credits below is an article attacking the policy. Whilst there is some buz words the key point is that the tax has already been paid by the company on your behalf at 30%. If your personal tax rate is higher than than 30% you pay the extra tax likewise if your personal tax rate is lower than 30% you get a refund.



Labor franking credit furphies hurt the most vulnerable
Could there be a clearer example of fake news: repeating that tax wasn’t paid when clearly it was?

Adrian Blundell-Wignall

May 8, 2019 — 11.00pmRegardless of who wins the next election, the question of trust and ethics in our politicians will remain. Ethical issues are normally hard to dissect, when generalisations and vagueness abound. But the Labor Party assertion that people who get franking credit refunds haven’t paid any tax, so the taxpayers are giving them a gift, raises an ethical issue. These people have paid tax – they are the beneficial owners of companies and had a 30 per cent tax paid for them by the “legal person” charged to do so on their behalf.
Confiscating their refunds undermines property rights.
The latest Edelman Trust Barometer shows that Australians do not trust their governments. Just 45 per cent of men and only 39 per cent of women trust government in Australia. Employers (77 per cent) and general business (52 per cent) are trusted more than government – imagine, governments trusted less than the finance sector, which underwent the royal commission.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has been using an old debating trick.
“Trust’’ is about reliance. If I am to rely on my government, then I am trusting that they will act truthfully and in the collective interest and hence I, in turn, can base my actions on this understanding.
At a general level it’s likely that superannuation policy has broken trust by continual changes in the rules. You cannot rely on politicians not to keep dipping into the honey pot. Nevertheless, such policies are the prerogative of governments and they treat equals equally. The franking credit proposal is quite different to this.

Labor has thrown up a snowstorm of rationales:
Giving refunds is a gift due to a tax loophole.
No other country in the world refunds franking credits, so nor should we.
People with self-managed super funds (SMSFs) are wealthy and rorting the system.

The alleged franking ‘‘loophole’’

A tax ‘‘loophole’’ is an unintended aspect of the law that allows taxes to be avoided. A ‘‘refund’’ is the repayment of a sum of money (it belongs to you). No one is avoiding either company or income tax under the current system. The ‘‘legal person’’ paid the company tax on behalf of the ‘‘beneficial owner’’.
The basic cause of the refund is that the money paid – the property of the beneficial owner – can’t be used in the way the company intended because government policy allows super income to be drawn down tax free.
Background: A limited liability company is the ‘‘legal person’’ in corporate governance that has responsibilities vis-a-vis the shareholders (the beneficial owners). Its presence ensures shareholders aren’t liable beyond their invested capital (the ‘‘corporate veil’’). Tax loopholes can arise. The corporate veil may be used to disguise the beneficial owners for illicit tax purposes, such as chains of shell companies ending in the Cayman Islands. Such genuine loopholes are worthy of attention by our politicians.

The economic reason to take a 30 per cent tax on the company income – income that belongs to the beneficial owners – at the level of the legal person is to stop the latter from protecting shareholders with income-tax rates above 30 per cent by holding back cash inside the ‘‘corporate veil’’. The legal person then distributes dividends to the beneficial owners and ‘‘imputes’’ the amount of company tax that was paid on their behalf (the attached ‘‘franking credit’’).
At this point, those with income-tax rates above 30 per cent are asked to pay more. What the company paid for you counts towards your income tax, and you pay the difference. A tax-exempt person with income from the same company also had 30 per cent of their income paid in tax.
Logic check: But we made this person tax-free for super income. We must therefore refund the tax paid on their income from this source.
Could there be a clearer example of fake news: repeating that tax wasn’t paid when clearly it was? This proposal amounts to the opposite of a ‘‘loophole’’. It is an ‘‘artifice’’ to raise the tax rate on company-sourced income. Confiscating this money from retirees (but not from other shareholders), while shifting the focus for unaffected voters – ‘‘anyway we will give the money to schools’’ – is sugar-coating discrimination between equivalent beneficial owners. It undermines property rights.

The only country in the world paying refunds?

Aside from the ridiculous logic here – other kids don’t do their homework so nor should I – only five OECD countries have imputation schemes: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and Chile. So, the rest of the world is just four countries. Of these, only one – New Zealand – has tax-exempt draw-downs from super (the others tax draw-downs, so all credits are usable).
So, the rest of the world reduces to one. But New Zealand never had compulsory super and never gave refunds, so people were able to plan to ensure tax credits were usable for those in their voluntary system. Australia did allow refunds and self-managed super funds became large. Older Australians can’t now go back decades and re-plan their future. We will be the only country that has entrapped a new tax base and then changed the property rights to confiscate from them.

Rich people rorting the system

The Labor leader’s website says: “some funds are paying zero tax and collecting a $2.5 million cheque from the tax office”.
This old debating tactic of appealing to extremes works by shifting the premises to debating the truthfulness of the extreme rather than its representativeness. Let’s look at the ATO data on SMSFs instead (see the table).
The majority of SMSFs are not so rich after all. The ALP leader’s example can only come from a fund greater than $10 million. But such funds are only 0.7 per cent of the total. Slippery stuff.

A reality and an irony

The reality is that a couple with the median fund could take the median income and just make it to the end of their 80s. Labor’s policy will reduce their income by 15-25 per cent and they will make it only to their mid-80s. The irony is that wealthier people with advisers will avoid all this. There are many options: switch money into a pooled fund; add accumulation members to your SMSF; sell shares with capital gains and offset the capital gains tax with the imputation credits; and switch to non-equity products.
Labor’s policy will hurt the most vulnerable. Undermining property rights and confiscation is intolerable.
Adrian Blundell-Wignall is a former director of the OECD, an adjunct professor at Sydney University, and author of Globalisation and Finance at the Crossroads.

AFR

[smile0784]

Copied from ABC News : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-10/ ... t/11078464

Can electric vehicles tow?
Experts told Fact Check that it was incorrect to suggest that electric vehicles generally did not have towing capacity.

Most electric vehicles have plenty of pulling power, reflected in their high output of torque.

A number of electric vehicles currently on the Australian market (and coming in 2019) generate power not too dissimilar to a standard petrol-fuelled vehicle. These models produce between 300 and 600Nm of torque.

The petrol-based Hyundai Kona produces a maximum output of 180Nm and a braked towing capacity of 1,300 kilograms, depending on fuel-tank capacity. In comparison, the Hyundai Kona electric produces 395Nm of torque but is not engineered for towing.

Professor John Andrew, of RMIT's School of Engineering, said there was no reason why electric vehicles would not be able to tow.

The "electric traction put in a vehicle — depending on how it's sized — can pull just as much as a petrol engine," he said.

He told Fact Check that a vehicle's towing capacity was dependent on what it was designed to do.

"What I think is happening is the current generation of electric cars have been designed to get a range that is as high as possible on a single charge and they have not been designed for pulling trailers or caravans and things like that.

"But there's no reason why — in the future — if this was a requirement, that vehicles couldn't be designed to do that. There's nothing in the technology that stops you. There's nothing inherent in the technology that rules that out."

Power shift
Max torque (Nm)* Towing capacity (Kg)
Audi e-tron : 664 1,800
Jaguar I-PACE : 696 750
Tesla Model X P100D : 967 2,250
Tesla Model 3 : TBA TBA
Mercedes EQC 400 4Matic : 760 1,800
Second generation Nissan Leaf : 320 N/A
Renault Kangoo Z.E : 226 322
Renault Zoe : 220 N/A
BMW i3 : 250 N/A
Kia e-Niro : 395 Not recommended
Hyundai Kona Electric Highlander : 395 N/A
Hyundai Ioniq : 295 N/A

We not going to see that at a reasonable price in our life time

[frozenpod]

Teslas have dropped about 60k over the last 6 years.

If that trend continues they will be competitive with petrol cars on price in about 10 years.

[Texas]

We had some Nissan leafs at work - although we didn't tow anything, they had plenty of "get up and go".
A taxi driver in Townsville, with a Toyota prius, said the batteries last about 300,000 km and are then changed.
Question- Is there a safe way to dispose of all these batteries???
Cheers Gra