Tell me this isn’t a Labor government: we’ve had three years of out-of-control spending. Now here come the taxes.
Superannuants have discovered a “hidden trap” in Labor’s planned unrealised capital gains tax, with the former chairman of Forestry Tasmania and MyState bank, Miles Hampton, saying he faces a hit on the recovering value of assets that booked losses before July 1, when the tax is to begin.
The Albanese government is seeking to use its majority election win and the Greens’ depleted status in parliament to ram through a new tax on unrealised capital gains beginning with superannuation funds worth more than $3m, without indexation.
Well, I’m just shocked. Shocked. Who could ever have seen this coming?
Because even the most spending-addicted Labor government is, eventually, going to dimly comprehend that ballooning debt is going to be kind of a problem. Despite his sneering dismissals in the election campaign, even a numpty like Anthony Albanese knows that a threatened downgrade of Australia’s credit rating would be an economic calamity.
The only way to avoid such a dire outcome is to either cut spending dramatically... or raise income. Which means taxes.
Who are we kidding? This is Labor. We know which they’re going to choose.
The government is relying on the new tax to help plug gaps in its growing budget deficits over the next four years with an estimated $40bn to be collected through the tax over the next decade […]
Bond University finance professor David Gallagher said the proposal had been badly thought through.
“The tax means you get punished on the cost base as of the date the tax starts. There just shouldn’t be a tax on unrealised gains,” Professor Gallagher said.
“The problem is that we now have a situation where the government is going further into debt and it needs to find tax revenue.
“We do need tax reform but we need takes that don’t attack incentives to invest. This tax attacks those incentives.”
But federal Labor are rank amateurs beside their Victorian state counterparts. Having yet again brought their state’s finances to the point of disaster, the Allan Labor government are desperately trying to bleed every cent they can out of Victorian businesses. Including a 2300 per cent tax increase in just a decade.
The owner of a Dandenong South sandblasting business that has worked on some of the biggest construction projects in Melbourne, including the MCG, has been left reeling after his land tax bill spiralled from $8700 to more than $203,000 in the past decade.
Angie Romas, who has run his steelwork, sandblasting and painting business DH Corrosion & DPC Coatings for more than 20 years, is in the frontline of Labor’s assault on businesses and property investors that will see the Allan government reap a predicted $9.3bn from land taxes – including its extra Covid debt levy on landholdings – in 2027–28, up from the $5.2bn it collected in 2022–23.
Yet, that won’t even begin to be the tiniest band aid on the gaping wound of Victoria’s finances.
Labor has hiked land taxes as Victoria buckles under state debt which last year’s budget forecast to grow from $156.2bn this year to $187.8bn in June 2028.
A government made up entirely of career politicians who’ve never worked in a business, let alone owned one, sees no problem with taxing profitable businesses into oblivion.
Mr Romas said his business – which employs 14 people and has been a supplier for major Victorian projects including the MCG expansion and refurbishments, Docklands Stadium, Southern Cross station and EastLink bridges – had been operating consistently at its Dandenong South site since 1973.
“This business generates a steady tax income stream (GST, payroll tax, company tax) for the state and federal governments,” Mr Romas wrote. “Why do Victorian businesses employing people and generating income for our federal and state governments get penalised so harshly with land tax? Who would want to start a new business in Victoria? The idea of running a business, employing workers, and striving to generate a profit only to pay a significant portion of this profit over to the state government in land tax has become a ridiculous business model.”
But it’s a great model for a failing socialist government.
Mr Romas said he thought the government were trying to drive him out of the property “so that they can crystallise a sale of the property and then get the stamp duty”.
The state government expects to collect more than $10bn from Victorian taxpayers in stamp duty in 2027–28, up from $8.5bn in 2024–25, according to estimates in last year’s budget.
And if you try to sit, they’ll tax your seat; if you get too cold, they’ll tax the heat.
And they’re coming for the pennies on dead folks’ eyes.
