Resource Super Profits Tax thingo whatsit

[Road_Warrior]

All I'm seeing and hearing with all the media circlejerking about this subject is emotive arguments. It's pretty hard for an ordinary person to gain a reasoned understanding of the pros and cons of the proposal with all this going on.

Consequently I know nothing and I'd like to know more. The Government's fact sheet on it is here:

http://www.futuretax.gov.au/document..._Tax_Final.pdf

Australia has abundant non‐renewable resources, which are expected to continue to command high prices, primarily driven by strong demand from China and India.

The community, through the Australian and State governments, owns Australian’s non‐renewable resources and charges private firms to exploit those resources through a large range of charging regimes involving royalties and taxes.

Current resource charging arrangements provide an inadequate return to the community and do not recognise the cost of resource investment and production, which can be particularly important during periods of low resource prices. Royalties are quite unresponsive to changes in resource profits, and the community has largely missed out on sharing in the vast wealth generated from the sale of Australia’s non‐renewable resources.

The RSPT will yield a return to the community as a share of resource profits that is more comparable to early 2000s, before the last mining boom. It will provide a more efficient mechanism for collecting a share of the returns to the community and remove impediments to mining investment and production.

Here is a fact sheet from the Mining Council of Australia:

http://www.minerals.org.au/__data/as...nd%20facts.pdf

The Government says mining doesn’t pay its fair share

Mining paid $80 billion in tax over the last decade


Mining pays a higher effective tax rate than any other industry

Mining paid eight times more tax last year than a decade ago

I would quote some more of the text in here but it went all munted when I tried to copy it.

So what is the deal? Has anyone cut through the crap and worked out whether or not this will be good or bad for Australia? Discuss.