(Adopted October 2014; updated May 2021; updated May 2024)

Principles

The Queensland Greens believe that:

1. Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.

2. Taxes and charges should be set to provide adequate revenue and, where appropriate, be used to encourage desirable outcomes such as reduced emissions.

3. A secure and expanded revenue base is required so that governments can fund a high standard of infrastructure and human services including education, health, transport, environmental protection and social security.

4. Significant additional revenue required should be raised by pricing polluting industries, resource extraction and economic rent.

5. Wherever possible taxation should be progressive.

Aims

The Queensland Greens will:

1. Phase out payroll tax for small and medium businesses.

2. Favour charges on ecosystem and social impacts, through acknowledging the necessity of introducing effective regulation.

3. Progressively replace transfer duties with a broad-based land tax with appropriate surcharges, concessions or exemptions.

4. Increase gambling taxes and levies, but divert the revenue into trusts for treating gambling addiction, investing in community housing and the non-government sector.

5. Make fines based on a percentage of gross income with a guaranteed minimum.

6. Make grants to private schools on a needs basis.

7. Abolish the First Home Owner Grant Scheme.

8. Reintroduce an Industry Waste Levy.

9. Substantially and progressively increase royalties, especially on coal and coal seam gas, based on a percentage of sales prices with a base minimum.

10. Abolish corporate welfare such as the provision of infrastructure for use by coal mining companies.

11. Tax revenue from the extraction of finite resources should be invested for the future or focused on providing public infrastructure, rather than used to meet recurrent expenditure.

12. Investigate introducing progressive state income taxation.