Davidson at it again.

Our old Gobbelsist Sinclair Davidson is at it again.

He is criticising the ALP policy on taxing some people's excess franking credits.

He shows he is either a complete ignoramus or is lying through his teeth
True to form none of the commenters are wiser.

First of all he claims most of the women affected ( remember it is mainly women affected).

He claims this will lead to them exhausting their share portfolios to gain the pension.

Well No.
The  pension has both an asset test and income test to gain some part of the pension.
If married then both people's situation is taken into account.
Unfortunately we do not know what assumptions Davidson is making. He simply makes this over generalised claim.
The Family home is not taken into account. Other assets are such as shares.
If Nana had a share portfolio of $258,500 if single or $387,500 if married then it is true she w ill no=t  have any access to a pension. Nana would get dividends of  $14.425 assuming a conservative 5% Return.
Now it is entirely unrealistic to assume Nana does not have superannuation if her share portfolio is so large at retirement age. Nana must have had a good job to buy all those shares or a wealthy husband who invested on her behalf..( This of course would lead Nana having a much more generous superannuation package than normal.
We should always remember the worst policy mistake that Costello ever made. Superannuation benefits have NO tax levied on them.
Let us again be conservative and assume Nan gets a superannuation pension of $40k per annum.
This means Nan is getting at present $54,425 a year tax free. Just remember the Super is taken into account for the income test which is if you get over $172 a fortnight you get nothing.
Davidson implies Nana is near penury.

Thus far Davidson does not understand either the pension assets or income tests.
He next has a go at Chris Bowen. Of all things he did not like fuel watch. WE do have fuelwatch now. I can look up what the price of petrol is at any station is locally. Davidson and his mates said this could  never be done. Davidson was responsible for predicting stagflation ( without ever getting the definition right) just when the nation got deflation according to the GDP Deflator. He also recently said anyone who supported a two state solution in the Middle East is anti-semitic

He then deliberately avoids Craig Emerson's main point. dividend imputation was envisaged where superannuation benefits were not taxed.

He then again refers to taxable income. however as we have talked about previously taxable income is a very poor predictor  of  wealthy a person is.

Taxable income is of course gross income less deductions. As many people have pointed out deductions are correlated with gross incomes.Conservatives in the past such as Michael Porter wanted to eliminate deductions /( as did Milton Friedman) because of this and if one did ordinary taxpayers  would pay less tax!

finally we should speculate on why females constitute such a large portion of people of excess franking credits.
Given it is unlikely we would have such a large cohort of females earning so much money in their career they have these franking credits then the only other solution to this is wealthy husbands have invested on their wives behalf ( because of their lower taxable income.
Numerate people would realise if Nana had a share portfolio of $ 387,500 she in fact would pay tax as the tax free threshhold is $18,200.

THIS article from Frances Coppola is pertinent.

Let us be rank excess franking credits is mostly a tax dodge for wealthy people. Davidson is your chief apologist for wealthy people to dodge paying tax.  As Craig Emerson pints out the more they dodge tax the more tax the punters have to pay to keep revenues at their present levels. This occurs because most punters do not have the deductions to reduce their taxable incomes!