Comment: Great big new bank 'surcharge' an easier sell

Bernard Kellerman
Despite the lobbying power of the big ASX-listed banks being just as strong - on paper anyway - as the mining sector, the current political climate could just see a bank tax, carefully deemed a surcharge, as one impost the Federal government may be able to push through.

This is particularly so if it's carefully drafted and the minor Senate parties can be kept onside. Certainly it would be an easier sell than, say, lifting and broadening the GST rate, which hits low income earners hardest and needs the magic touch of a cat whisperer - a skill totally absent among the current crop of political leaders of all stripes.  

And it would go some way to rebuffing the points made in COBA's recent submission to the Senate inquiry into the mutuals sector, which highlighted a tax disadvantage vis a vis the listed banks' actual tax rate of about seven per cent.