What a tin-eared areshole this bloke is. Let’s recall what Do-nothing Malcolm wrote in 2005, when he labelled negative gearing and the capital gains tax (CGT) discount a “sheltering tax haven” and “tax avoidance” that it is “skewing national investment away from wealth-creating pursuits, towards housing”.
And let’s recall what Do-nothing Malcolm said in 2014:
“Looking at Australia’s tax regime you would say that it is too tough on people earning income… but is incredibly concessional to older people who have made their money…
Yet today he is the last holdout protecting these same concessions. Via Peter Martin:
…even experts who disliked Labor’s proposals the first time round are shifting their ground.
Ken Morrison is chief executive of the Property Council. No relation to the Treasurer Scott Morrison, he attacked Labor’s proposals at the time as a “risky intervention”. These days he says he would be open to a more modest capital gains tax discount – maybe 40 per cent instead of 50 per cent.
Coincidentally 40 per cent is what was recommended by the Henry Tax Review, for much the same reason.
The Business Council has also supported a cut to 40 per cent…Tony Shepherd…says he’d scrap the capital gains tax discount altogether.
David Murray…concluded that “the tax treatment of investor housing, in particular, tends to encourage leveraged and speculative investment in housing”.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe is thinking along the same lines.
The International Monetary Fund has reached the same conclusion…
The Institute of Company Directors wants the discount cut to 40 per cent…
The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia wants 25 per cent…
The Treasury itself has worked up a number of models…
Morrison’s predecessor, Joe Hockey, identified housing taxation as one of the most important things to get right in his final speech to the parliament…
Indeed, it’s hard to find anyone, apart from speculators themselves, who doesn’t now think that a 50 per cent tax discount is too generous a reward for speculation…
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That’s not everybody. Also in favour of cutting CGT are CBA, Deloitte, KPMG, the Tax Institute, the PBO, Chris Cuffe, 44% of Australians versus 35% against, state premiers, to name just a few more.
Yet instead we have this, via the AFR:
The push inside the Turnbull government to curb the capital gains tax concession for housing investors is “hanging by a thread”, amid growing external pressure to target tax incentives to help combat the nation’s housing affordability crisis.
As the government grapples over the content of the housing affordability package it will unveil at the May 9 budget, sources confirmed the push to include a paring back of the 50 per cent CGT concession was still alive, despite opposition led by Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is also understood not to be keen on the idea while Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar is supportive of doing something and Treasurer Scott Morrison is open-minded.
“It’s hanging by a thread,” said one source familiar with internal deliberations.
Separately, the government has also not ruled a line under allowing young homebuyers to access superannuation to help fund a deposit, something else Senator Cormann opposes on the basis it would fuel house prices.
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One month out and they still don’t know? Could not run a piss-up in a brewery.
