[wycx]

Centrelink has been speculatively invoicing people to recover undeserved welfare payments based on crude data matching with income tax datasets.

How nice it would be if they did some data matching to determine who was actually living in a property as their primary residence, vs. changed their mailing address to that of their residential property to pretend it was their primary dwelling, and issued invoices for unpaid CGT.

Given foregone tax from the CGT discount and negative gearing represent significantly larger sums than that spent on Newstart, chasing property investors would seem to be lower hanging fruit...

[rbg246]

They most certainly do chase property investors who do claim incorrect primary residence. Remember primary place of residence is only while you live there so if you change it one month before selling it only offsets one month of profits and what if you have multiple properties you can't hide it all with that.

However the bigger problem remains that capital is taxed at half the rate of labour and this matched with tax free pensions has meant people with built up capital have gotten extraordinarily rich in the past decade and a half at the expense generally of the younger generation.

[victorhooi]

Are you sure about that part about only while you live there?

I have friends who tell me they "need" (well, want to) live in their investment property for 6 months every few years, in order to get a refresh on their tax breaks?

[rbg246]

Actually you could be right with your friends.