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!
Pity they didn't also change the gas tax.
Share tax changes... ugh
My hope was cashed up bogans would start betting on shares instead of housing/crypto. At least it could be funnelled into something productive
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.
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...
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%
perhaps try a different perspective of, "it's good i live in a place where we contribute for a common good"
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.
What a miserable, selfish view of the world you have
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.
Dubai is just a comical option.
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.
https://www.life.gov.sg/guides/domestic-helper
https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/visas/foreign_domestic_...
Describing it as "pretty good value" bothers me in a number of contexts.
I'm also fine with this never becoming a thing in Australia. Not sure how out-of-touch or in-touch that makes me, but that's how I feel nonetheless.
@Loocid, thanks for saying what I was dancing around.
The whole power dynamic is extremely exploitable which results in a lot of abuse cases.
I don't consider taking someone out of a shit situation into a slightly less shit situation for your huge benefit all that benevolent personally.
> 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
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?
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
It's a privilege to come into this country, its a privilege to live in Sydney. If you don't like it, you can leave.
I make less (even before tax) than you PAID in tax, yet you still want handouts.
I hate to put it like this, but that's exactly what the poster is doing.
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.
people that count their tax dollars are usually very selfish to begin with.
i generally think the gov can do better with how money is spent though.
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.
It is always funny to see how many think they are hard done even though by the numbers they are the winners by a wide margin.
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'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.
That means the four-day-workweek is even better than we thought it was!
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?
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.
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.
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.
This isn't short term thinking. It's the opposite.
Allowing the super wealthy, whom are the actual ones that benefit from capital gains, accumulate untold wealth is clearly resulting it a multitude of societal ills (including the dismantling of democracy itself here in the US).
Looking at even a little bit of recent history will clearly show you what happens when we let the super wealthy just get more wealthy (have a look at the Gilded Age).
The propaganda around taxation causing economic slowdown is so tired...
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.
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..
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.
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.