Budgetting for anxiety

How is your status anxiety today? Hope it's under control. Have you checked if the latest budget offers some prozac?. Apparently it's supposed to give tax cuts to the high and middle income earners over the next two years. Andrew Leigh from Imagining Australia has some analysis. To summarise,

viewed per individual ... Report (pdf) [see pages 8/9]

Here is the annual pre-tax income distribution for adults (aged 18-64 with positive incomes), and the corresponding tax cuts in the budget.

• Poorest 25%: $6,830 per year ($80 tax cut)
• Median: $29,890 per year ($312 tax cut)
• Richest 25%: $49,000 per year ($312 tax cut)
• Richest 10%: $70,000 per year ($1752 tax cut)
• Richest 5%: $90,000 per year ($2752 tax cut)
• Richest 1%: $162,000 per year ($4502 tax cut)

These income figures are from the 2003 HILDA survey....

viewed per household ... Report (pdf)

• The share of the tax cuts going to the richest 1% of households will be 3% in 2005-06 and 4% in 2006-07.
• A greater share of the 2006-07 tax cuts will go to the richest 5% (19%) than to the poorest 50% (11%).
• Middle-income taxpayers get substantially less than an even share of the tax cuts.

This probably didn't help your anxiety as everyone else in the same income bracket will get the tax cuts. In case you've forgotten how well off you are in Oz this should help you relax.