Tax reform – what about resources taxes?

August 25, 2025

I have not closely followed the discussions of tax reform so maybe I missed it, but Michael Keating’s article presented itself as somewhat comprehensively covering the possible areas of reform.

While I consider myself to be well short of his economic knowledge, I was surprised to find no reference to taxing the resource sector for its ability to extract huge resource-generated profits at minimal benefit to our national budgetary position.

Having been in Norway last year and observed them gloating about the benefits of their sovereign fund, I despaired again about our failure to emulate such an approach.

When someone of Keating’s standing fails to even mention this, I can only wonder. Surely even at this late stage in our extraction history, we can use futures extractions to raise a few billion dollars.