CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A senior couple from Betoota’s Flight Path District who wholeheartedly backed Scott Morrison in the 2019 federal election have today learnt that they might have completely misunderstood the concept of dividend imputation.
Roy and Sheryl Gardner (both 76) say that after reading the Courier Mail for the entire election campaign, they were led to believe that Labor was going to pay for everything by effectively stealing their pension from them – or something like that.
While the words ‘franking credits’ were something they heard vaguely referred to on Sky News every night, they weren’t 100% sure what it was, but the whole idea of a Retiree Tax scared the shit out of them.
However, as they have learnt today, as lower-middle-class retirees who actually don’t own any shares, they had nothing to lose by voting for Labor – except for the crucial government services that will slashed in the imminent recession.
Dividend imputation is a corporate tax system in which some or all of the tax paid by a company may be attributed, or imputed, to the shareholders by way of a tax credit to reduce the income tax payable on a distribution. As leading economists have pointed out, it was introduced in Australia as way for Peter Costello to squirrel away the disgusting amount of money that came out of the mining boom.
However, for those who don’t extort this tax loophole for a free ride, very little is known about Franking Credits, other than the fact that Labor wanted to scrap them, and that was a bad thing, according to every media outlet except the disgustingly biased ABC.
However, with Australian billionaire Dick Smith today revealing that even he knew fuck all about franking credits until he received $500,000 from the government this year, Roy and Sheryl are starting to learn that this was never about them.
“I’m not telling anyone who I voted for” says Roy, the Quiet Australian.
“Me either” says Sheryl, another Quiet Australian, currently sitting on a 22-month-waiting list at the Betoota public hospital for a cataract operation.
“It’s very embarrassing to think I got caught up in that whole Promise Of Australia”
“I’m staying very bloody quiet about that”
