I get so frustrated with Government talkfests. Their fancy name is a “Summit”.

Whenever there’s a big issue facing this country which the politicians don’t know how to resolve without offending someone, they hold a “Summit” so they can “consult” with the community.

A whole lot of associations and lobby groups with vested interests are thrown together for the Summit, recommendations are made which politicians say they’ll “consider” and which are then promptly shelved, never to be heard of again.

Yes I’m a finance nerd, and probably naïve (okay, annoying as well), but I want to see if I can make a difference at the next summit. And I want your help.

I reckon our tax system is so unwieldy it is damaging this country. On October 4-5 there is going to be a Tax Summit to discuss overhauling Australia’s complicated and archaic tax system. The usual mix of business and welfare lobby groups have been invited but 30 “community” spots were left open for anyone who wanted to apply through the Federal Treasurer’s website.

I applied and jagged a spot.

Here’s where I need your help. I want you to put your thinking cap on and send me suggestions of what I should take to Canberra. Suggestions on how we can improve our tax system to make it simpler, fairer and provide incentive to work, save and build this country.

I want to specifically look at personal and small business taxes. The ones which affect us the most.

Big business and government are powerful enough to look after themselves.

Our Federal tax laws currently take 16,000 pages to explain. They are so complex that 71 per cent of people just give up and pay an average $320 to get a professional tax agent to do it for them.

Even then, our tax system is so complex that 22 per cent of all returns lodged by a professional tax agent contains errors.

It’s just crazy stuff.

Then there are fundamental issues like why should capital gains get better tax treatment than interest income on savings. What the?

Now I don’t want simple one line criticisms. Explain the tax issues most important to you and then outline how you think they can be improved.

I’ll then go through them all, flesh them out with the help of some tax experts and then come back to you with a list for comment.

A couple of thought starters I’ve been mulling over are;

. Limit the tax benefits of negative gearing

Look, negative gearing of investments has got way out of hand. Is there an argument to limit the amount of negative gearing which can be claimed?

What about grandfathering all existing negatively geared investment property, but in the future only newly built property could be negatively geared to stimulate the housing market and improve affordability.

. Improve the tax treatment of savings income

Compared with the rest of the world Australians (and their super fund managers) are risk takers. We have more invested in the sharemarket than virtually any other country in the world and suffer the most during crashes. It’s because or tax system is skewed against income returns on savings. We need balance that tax treatment up to be at least the same as on capital gains.

. Substantially lower the company tax rate for small business

Small business is the engine room of this country. They don’t sit in their flash offices using other people’s money. They put their own money at risk, put their houses on the line and work bloody hard.

But there doesn’t seem any incentive to take that big risk.

Why not have significantly lower corporate tax rate for small businesses to encourage them to start and keep growing. The bigger they get, the more people they employ, the more tax they’ll pay and Australia is the winner.

. Rebate payroll tax if a small business employs above a certain number

I know payroll tax is a State tax but there’s no reason why the Federal Government can’t rebate the tax back to a small business person if they employ about a certain amount of staff. It’s a practical way of encouraging small business to employ more.

Hopefully this gets you thinking and I would love your suggestions.

My promise is that each will be considered carefully and I promise to report back