Australia also has a 60 year productivity low and a government that is boosting taxes on capital gains on shares/business to basically a worldwide high. So take our experiments with a grain of salt!
My limited-research understanding is that there shouldn't be a difference between capital gains from housing versus shares, otherwise it's 'picking winners' or encouraging investment in specific directions. Having said that, the 'winner' they've picked is new house builds, which retain some tax benefits. I'm OK with that, without having skin in that game now or likely into the future.
In regards to other comments further down regarding Australia's tax rates being high, internationally Australia is on the lower end.
I believe the (seemingly very loud) naysayers about these tax changes are those who receive much more of their income via 'capital' than via 'effort', and so my sympathies are minimal to non-existent. Sure, I have capital investments that will yield lower returns, but I believe the changes make "the way it works" overall more fair to those who don't have the means to earn means passively.
Cashed up bogans may funnel more of their money into new house builds, which is productive...?
Semi-unrelated addition:
To some extent I think that 'owning ones own house' is a motivator to work harder, so as home ownership has grown increasingly out of reach, so has some amount of motivation to actually work dried up. There's an inherent 'participation in society' to owning a home that has an intangible but high value. Whether this has anything to do with Australia's decreasing productivity, I don't know.
Yeah, housing tax changes were needed, but seems weird to also do Shares.
NZ, like always is lagging behind AU, and also needs house tax changes. The housing situation in NZ dire.
NZ is even worse than Australia on the housing tax vs shares tax front. No housing taxes. Yet they have what is effectively an annual wealth tax on shares (FIF) even on their pitiful retirement savings schemes. This discourages saving in shares and encourages putting money in real estate.
You shouldn't have to rely on shares investments to make a living or retire though.
Just because someone doesn't invest in shares, doesn't mean they are a bogan.
I'm sick of this term being thrown around at people you look down upon...
Yeah, everyone is forced to accept their own individual risk in their super and other investments (as usual, favoring the wealthy with enough spare money, time and contacts to get proper financial advice). Better if that risk was born collectively. But government funded pensions are communist or something. At least most of the super funds I see are non-profits.
The tax is already bad here, even without it. I paid $89,000 taxes just for the last financial year because stock gains are added up on top of the income and my partner doesn’t work and there’s no family support allowance here.
I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where the tax is < 20%
To pay $89,000 in taxes you'd have to be earning in the range of $350k. Do you think you're hard done by? I'd be rather annoyed if you were eligible for family support allowance in that earning range? (partially because I'd be missing out on a decent chunk of government support myself)
What am I missing about your situation that makes it remotely sympathetic?
If you live in inner Sydney, the rent alone is $1350 pw and tax is ridiculous. I basically sold my stocks to have a down payment but then that got added on top of income. If i’d have stayed in HK, i’d have paid 0% for that.
I just treat it as paying for Australian citizenship to
make me feel better and it still comes out cheaper than buying a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. Australian passport also opens up the E3 visa to go to the USA
Oz needs the immigrants or it would be screwed. It isn't a fecking privilege.
In NZ ~30% of the population was born overseas. We do it because NZ requires more people of working age - because our demographics are shit and they're becoming deeper shit (aside AU is part of our problem). We need young workers and we bribe them here with lifestyle, money from jobs, and houses for the fortunate.
It's a compounding bad debt solution - since those immigrants also get older and will become unaffordable retirees for our country.
I think Aus has similar dynamics - but not as badly because Oz is much wealthier than NZ.
I'm some years away from retirement age - but the demographics mean that I'm screwed. Everyone will be screwed. If you're fortunate enough to have been able to save for retirement, say goodbye to those savings over time.
I expect NZ will start to increase immigration because there's too many undesirable jobs (jobs that NZers don't want to do, or that there simply isn't enough NZers for the jobs).
Immigrants work. It is a only a stop-gap solution.
Our politicians lack the ability to encourage enough business growth: therefore taxation income can't keep up with NZ government expenses.
As an Australian with a family and 2 high-paying salaries paying a LOT of tax, none of those countries are remotely comparable to Australia.
If you hate taxes and fees, Singapore has a 60% Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty on residential property applied to foreign buyers, on top of an already insane property market. There's huge fines and government intervention into _everything_ and a massive high-stress culture.
Hong Kong is equally absurd for property and has a sword hanging over its head, that falls if China ever makes a move on Taiwan; the inevitable US and global sanctions would decimate HK.
I can get PR in Singapore through my partner, so no 60%. Company paid medical and everything so expat life and no responsibilities. And if I were ever have to have kids, you can’t hire a maid here sleeping at your apartment and you have to clean yourself which is ridiculous. In Hk, SG, Dubai you can get domestic helpers cheaply and they take care of everything
Mate, 3 months ago you admitted on HN that you never get Singapore PR, just admit you want to moan how west is bad. I pay more taxes than you, and that's ok, Australia worth it.
> shell0x 3 months ago | As a white person, I’d probably never get PR too but I think it’s good that they maintain the current percentages, otherwise the country would turn unrecognizable like Germany or France
> And if I were ever have to have kids, you can’t hire a maid here sleeping at your apartment and you have to clean yourself which is ridiculous.
Not sure if serious.
If serious: This is a really weird and almost sociopathic thing to say. I really don't get where you're coming from. It's certainly not the cultural direction I'd like to see Australia moving in.
If you made income, and enough gain in stocks to pay that much in tax, you should be happy.
I want to know why you are keen to become an Australian citizen if you’re not enthusiastic about contributing your share.
Constructive discussion about appropriate levels of taxation is important, but let’s at least agree that the things we rely on (roads, hospitals, schools, defence, …) cost something.
I lived in Singapore and Hk before, don’t drive, work from home and countries are pretty much interchangeable. I left Germany for high taxes for a reason.
I pay private medical so don’t benefit much from tax anyway. No kids, no car, paid off my apartment. I can get much better value elsewhere right?
If I tell you you can pick 3 dishes
a) singapore: safe, low crime, low tax, efficient, excellent public transportation, better roads
b) hk: safe, low crime, low tax, politically getting worse, excellent public transport, better airport
c) australia: higher crime compared to the other too, high tax but bad services
I basically pay for an overpriced dish with bland taste, so why would I keep doing that?
I preferred living in Hong Kong and Singapore and do not enjoy living here honestly, but if you treat it as payment for my+partner’s backup citizenship, it seems more justifiable.
I'd assume, as an Australian, who works for a HK company and has travelled for work all their life, the long term lifestyle in Australia is probably better than those countries. I love HK and Singo but I am not sure I'd want to live there. But for working, most people here would not work in an iron lung and the socialist government pretty much supports the idea that, if you don't like to work, you shouldn't have to as long as there are a few who will work. And, that number is fewer and fewer.
I'm sorry but you pay more in tax than I make in income! This sounds like your lifestyle creep has chewed up your money stream. Despite my significantly lower income, I manage to own my house in Melbourne. With your income I could have it paid down in a few years at most.
I'm in a similar boat, and can relate to the on-going management and suppression of lifestyle creep in order to reach worthwhile goals. It feels like a never-ending battle, even after 20 years.
Good job paying that off. I’m sure Australia has benefits for some but without kids, not having grown up here, paying my own insurance and not driving I don’t really see it.
So you're saying that four-day-workweek companies saw no decline in their productivity, in contrast to the Australian average productivity which went down overall‽
That means the four-day-workweek is even better than we thought it was!
What's your point about increased capital gains? Taxing income based on ownership should be higher than income via actual labor. It's insane that's not the case in most places.
My understanding is that the difference is in the Capital Gains Tax, which doesn't apply to the day-to-day running of the business or its profitability or the salaries it pays.
Again, my understanding is that the (only) difference is when the business is sold, and the 50% discount to CGT is no longer applied and instead there is an inflation adjustment instead (what I don't understand here is how to get an initial valuation, and would it be essentially $0, so the entire amount is capital gains? which feels somewhat unfair)
So it will be a hit at the time the business is sold, not at any point during the running of the business. My (potentially naive) take is that the hard work that goes into running and growing a business is about the provision of the goods or services, but if it's about maximising "the exit", then that feels to me like not the kind of incentive that it should be. The 'running' of the business being more important than the selling of it.
The 50% CGT discount has set a bad precedent. It should have been lower, or should have scaled over time. It has deformed the expected reward structure.
Can a business agree to be sold in tranches over time? If such a thing helps minimise tax then I can see that becoming the norm. I know that selling a house is a big, singular chunk of money that generally needs to be 'managed' in order to pay the minimum amount of tax. Maybe fractional selling is going to become a thing.
Wouldn't paying yourself a higher salary (since it's your own business) and/or putting more into superannuation offset the 'retirement' hit of not getting a golden exit parachute?
ps. Australia uses a progressive tax system. If you earn very little money, you pay a very low tax rate (or many zero). If you earn a massive corporate salary, you pay the top rate.
The new 30% floor completely throws that out the window for capital gains. It means even if your total income for the year is low enough that your normal tax rate should be 16% or 0%, the government steps in and forces a flat 30% tax on the asset sale anyway.
So, contrary to what the government is saying, this new regime taxes the poorer even more.
On paper yes, but very few of the _actual poor_ were making capital gains on asset sales. Aus Govt figures claim 90% of people under 35 do not own shares outside of retirement funds(which get different tax treatment).
It closes the loop holes where wealthy people approaching retirement would spend a few years paying very little tax and living off capital gains instead at a ~20% tax rate.
My non-heavily-researched understanding is that people who make their entire, or a majority of, their annual 'earnings' from capital gains may not be all that poor.
There's a whole spectrum of examples that can be used to demonstrate fairness or lack of fairness. Can you elaborate on your example of taxing a poor person even more by forcing a flat 30% tax on capital gains? Is this person you? What does your life entail whereby you are poor whilst also living almost entirely off capital gains?
You can still get all your capital out before the 1st of July 2027, and then re-distribute into areas that have better tax incentives, like new house builds. Sounds like that might solve two problems at once.
It's not me. I actually work for a living and I receive a salary.
Many people I know with their own business plan to hopefully get out of it some day. They all make less than me but own a business of their own.
Let's say this works and those people who already have assets get taxed a bit more, when they are gone, there would then now very little incentive to work hard and start a business.
Such short term thinking will pretty much destroy the economy in the long term. You can't tax an economy to health and fairness.
>It means even if your total income for the year is low enough that your normal tax rate should be 16% or 0%, the government steps in and forces a flat 30% tax on the asset sale anyway.
From the budget:
"Recipients of means-tested income support
payments, such as the Age Pension or JobSeeker,
will be exempted from the minimum tax if they
receive any payment in the financial year in which
they realise the capital gain."
The flat rate is to stop people from dropping their income artificially and claiming the reduced rate. Most people won't run foul of this. Something like 90% of the capital gains discount was taken by the top 1%.
So your argument only applies to people who earn between 20 & 45k who don't get any government benefits (which are means tested, so they cannot be cash or asset rich), and realise a capital gain from an investment (is. not their house).
While philosophically I think it wrong that someone who earns very little cannot spread a tax liability over multiple years, the way corporations can.. I cannot think of a way that a disjoint could be given for this cohort that does not also open the door to loopholes for the 1%. Plus the number of people effected will be vanishingly small, and the amount to which that small number of purple are effected will also be small.
So, largely, contrary to what you are saying, they are not..
Sorry, what asset sales are poor people making while earning no income?
Is this a common thing in Australia cause it's not here in the US.
If you're saying instead that it applies to people living off their investments, then I have no sympathy for them as they're able to live off of ownership not labor. They should pay the same or more tax than anyone else.
Capital gains is from selling an assets, if you still own the business you can take as many profits from it as you want.
If you're talking about selling the business, then presumably you had years of realizing profits from the actual operation of the business. Now that you sell it, yes, you should be taxed at a higher rate. That said, there are tons of tax loopholes for that scenarios like in the US like a cash balance plan.
But let's be honest, we're talking mostly about the sale of assets like stock ownership. That's how the super wealthy accumulate even more wealth. Then combine that with "buy, borrow, die" and you're paying almost no taxes.
All most people is for the rich to pay a proportionally fair amount of tax.
How is the recently announced 2026 Australian Government budget relevant to this study done in 2023-2024? There is a whole bunch of other factors to Australia's productivity, not at least the drop in GDP per capita and fall in Total Factor Productivity.
Pity they didn't also change the gas tax.