I read the news today; 57% of tax payers use more tax funds than they pay

[Quick Read] Regular readers might recall that I often refer to the Australian Financial Review (AFR) as the most depressing paper in Australia. Well if the AFR is the most depressing paper then the Australian comes in close behind it as the second most depressing paper. On the upside, they are generally well written and I rarely manage to find a copy-editing error worthy of marking up.

My amazing wife got me the Weekend Australian today. On the front page the main item was titled "One in two reliant on public purse", with the sub-title of "6.4 million voters depend on Government".

So I read it and following is the paragraph that pretty well summarises the complete article.

"ANU researcher Ben Phillips estimated that only 43 percent of the adult population, excluding public sector workers, were net taxpayers last year, bringing the actual total voter-dependency ratio to well over 50 percent."

A net taxpayer is a taxpayer who contributes more tax than they consume.

So the bottom line here, in plain language, is that there are only about 43 percent of us taxpayers not directly taking back all the tax we paid—and then some—by way of various Government schemes.

From this I think you can probably understand why I strongly recommend that one should only read the AFR or the Australian when one has either good supportive friends nearby, or, failing that, a nice red wine.

And no wonder neither the Labor or Liberal parties are talking about cutting back on any Government pay-out schemes leading up to the election—that would instantly put pretty close to 57 percent of voters off-side.

[Edit] Interestingly I cannot find this article on the Australian's Web site. I was going to put in the link to it. So if you want to read the full article you will have to get this week's (16 - 17 April, 2016) Weekend Australian.