Take your pick on Bandt’s super-profits tax: Revenue now, or retirement savings later

Adam Bandt’s proposal for what he bluntly calls a “Big Corporation Tax” on profits above “a reasonable rate of return” for companies with turnovers above $100 million would, he insists, “not take a cent from the pockets of Australians who rely upon returns from their investments, like pensioners or the 17 million Australians with superannuation balances.”

How he’ll achieve that without a magic pudding has yet to be explained. Companies that are earning “super profits”, however defined, normally pay those profits back to investors — a list that now includes every Australian worker via the superannuation system.