Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen says Labor doesn't support the coalition's personal tax cuts pencilled in for 2022 and 2024, because they are fundamentally unfair, in the never never and fiscally reckless.
Mr Bowen will use a speech on Monday to peak welfare lobby group, the Australian Council of Social Services, to lay out Labor's reasonings for not backing a key policy of the coalition, saying it will see a nurse paying the same marginal tax rate as a surgeon.
"How is that fair?" he will ask.
That's because if the Liberals are elected, in 2024/25, everyone earning between $45,000 and $200,000 would face the same 30 per cent marginal tax rate.
The Australian Institute and the Grattan Institute have found if stage three of the government's plan is rolled out in 2024/25, 50 per cent of the benefits of the tax cuts go to the top 20 per cent of income earners.
"As we saw yesterday, not even the finance minister could say how much of the benefits go to the highest income earners," Mr Bowen will say, referring to an interview Mathias Cormann gave to Sky News on Sunday.
Senator Cormann refused to put a dollar figure on the amount and disputed modelling by the Australian Institute that put it at $77 billion.
"The highest income earners will continue to pay 60 per cent of all income tax revenue generated in Australia," the minister repeatedly answered.
Mr Bowen believes it is a pretty fundamental question for the Liberals to answer - how much of the $290 billion in income tax cuts flow to those earning the top marginal tax rate?
He will also say the 2022 and 2024 tax cuts are fiscally reckless and irresponsible.
"They're in the never never," Mr Bowen will say.
"No one knows what the economy will be doing then, I don't, you don't, and Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg certainly don't."
But Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australians will pay higher taxes over the next decade under a Labor government.
"Everyone who works for any business in this country will have less money to spend because Bill Shorten will have taken it off them," he told radio 2GB.
The independent Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated by 2029/30 the cost of the final two stages of tax cuts will be $50 billion a year.
"What we will see if the Liberals get their way, is a fiscal crunch befitting the (US conservative) Tea Party where they bake in tax cuts for high-income earners into the budget with unspecified spending cuts that will really bite over the next decade," Mr Bowen will say.
"Labor will continue to prioritise cost of living relief to low and middle-income earners and return bracket creep when it's prudent to do so, but only when the economic and fiscal circumstances allow."
