Reducing inequality means taxing capital more — including inheritances – Alan Kohler
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-23/reducing-inequality-means-taxing-capital-more/106369480
Reducing inequality means taxing capital more — including inheritances – Alan Kohler
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-23/reducing-inequality-means-taxing-capital-more/106369480
33 Comments
at this point just subsidising capital less would be a good start
If taxes on capital are going to increase, it should be offset by reducing taxes on labour.
> *But I’ve got news for both of them: inequality, and specifically the intergenerational kind, will only be addressed by taxing the people who have the money, not by cutting taxes for those who don’t.*
Alan Kohler puts it plainly.
It’s astounding that we keep dancing around the central fact that wealth is concentrating unchecked among the rich. We keep talking about small-ticket changes, such as Dutton’s proposed [25c per litre cuts from the cost of petrol for 12 months](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-26/coalition-halve-fuel-excise-25-cent-petrol/105100580), or Chalmers’ implemented [$10 per week income tax cuts](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-25/federal-budget-2025-chalmers-tax-cuts-election-clash/105093346).
they really dont want the next generation to buy houses at all do they.
Tax people and buisiness w gross investments or value over 5 mill (indexed) and leave everyone else.
Why don’t we start with properly taxing massive mining corporations before increasing taxes on individuals?
“Tim Wilson keen to do something about inter-generational inequality”
Expect this means he wants everyone to dip into their super again? To make the poor poorer, and the rich richer?
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo shit.
161 Billionaires in Australia…………and plenty with offshore accounts….
Shit mining taxes.
Shit gas taxes.
wont touch negative gearing.
oh wait! idea! lets do an inheritance tax to take more out of the next generation to make it even harder for those families to get into the market…..
we just go in circles never actually fixing a problem…
I’m gonna be honest the article lost me when they started making claims like
“Most people are about to lose their jobs to AI powered robots” and “most homes are only owned for 8 years so we should base mortgage and capital gains off of that”
This brings to mind the Jack Toohey video [Do you pay more tax than the wealthy? Probs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/16fjyy4/do_you_pay_more_tax_than_the_wealthy_probs_jack/)
A statistic from the book *[Gen F’d?: How Young Australians Can Reclaim Their Uncertain Futures](https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/gen-f_d_-by-alison-pennington/9781743799215)* (2023) by Alison Pennington, says that more money is spent on tax concessions for superannuation (primarily benefiting already-wealthy people) than it does spending on the aged pension. The source for this statistic seems to be *[Self-funded or State-funded Retirees?: The cost of super tax concessions](https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/self-funded-or-state-funded-retirees/)* (2023) by Richard Denniss and David Richardson from The Australia Institute.
Pretty simple but our politicians of all flavors are sell outs.
1. Tax the multinationals properly. Especially any company that is extracting resources, all those resources collectively belong to every Australian, we should reap the benefits of their extraction, once they are gone they are gone and we are never getting another go.
We should have a sovereign wealth fund like Norway. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway)
Instead we bend over backwards for the likes of Gina Rinehart and other multinationals that take all the profit offshore or for personal enrichment. We in fact pay them for the privilege of plundering our resources.
2. Stop subsidising the asset class. Negative gearing, CGT concessions (especially for housing) Trust setups etc. Wind them way back so people can’t weasel their way out of contributing their fair share to society. Tax wealth more, yes put in an inheritance tax so that intergenerational inequity doesn’t get worse than it already is.
3. Reduce taxes across the board for everyday workers. Our tax base relies way too heavily on taxing regular workers that subsidise some absolute bullshit subsidies for individuals or businesses who barely pay tax.
Extremely unlikely this will happen as it seems we are well entrenched into the “fuck you, got mine” direction for our country.
Remains to be seen for Chalmers (although time is starting to run out), but Logan Roy’s line rings so very true with respect to Tim Wilson
“you are not serious people”
Wilson had all the time in the world – and capacity – to address this. Did nothing. Not serious people.
This tired argument always seems to pop up as a distraction method.
Including inheritance tax would only apply to those that don’t have the resources to utilise tax professionals…
How? So you start taxing family trusts, which is where a lot of that capital resides. Then rich people will find ways – once again – to minimise and outright avoid that. The money will move offshore, for a start.
Lots of rich people got that way because they pay smart accountants specifically to avoid paying large sums of tax.
Scale the CGT discount out to five or even ten years, not just a simple 50% discount after two years.
Scale back negative gearing for residential property – less and less NG available for each additional property. Unlimited for 1 property, 50% reduction for the second, 25% for the third, and 10% for each subsequent property.
Vacancy taxes on residential and commercial property.
I came here to post this. Good on you
You really do need to tax inheritances.
I’d also eliminate the deductibility of interest. Both due to the ability to profit shift to lower tax regimes enabled by it, and because it encourages raising capital through debt instead of shares which increases instability.
Most likely they will give people a $450 tax cut or increase tax free threshold by 2.3k and announce it at the same time as CGT discount cut.
This gov will do everything except taxing billion dollar companies properly (they currently pay negative tax, I.e. the government keeps giving them money). Would also go a really long way to start taxing businesses disguised as ‘religious orgs’ when they are buying and selling property, making massive capital gains, and also paying negative tax (I.e. Government gives them money too).
Ask 100 people on here what their definitely of “well-off parents.” is, and we’ll get a large variety of answers.
Are we taxing urban people more than regional people, because their primary residence is worth more, and therefore they are more wealthy? How will that help urban kids enter the property market?
Are we taxing regional people more than urban people because for some their primary residence is on their income producing farm, that passes down from generation to generation? How will that help the farm stay in family hands?
Is it based on what the parents had or what the kids will get?
Just fucking tax billionaires (both people and corporations) more.
I think people would have less of a problem with new personal taxes if large multinational firms operating in Australia were also contributing to tax revenue.
And I think we’d have less wealth inequality if the people of Australia benefited equitably from natural resource extraction.
Always in Australia its this exercise of “look over here, look over here”, distracting everyone from the absolute rorts that the government happily facilitates.
As it is, all the systems and policies in place at the moment just ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Then the rich complain about the negative societal impacts of wealth inequality.
Meanwhile almost $10t worth of resources was discovered in the past month that will go
Largely untaxed.
Taxing that amount properly would mean free dental, advancing our public health system, building better hospitals, schools, roads, investing HSR.
Can we stop being distracted and start getting angry and protesting about the benefits from our resources advancing our whole nation and not a few mega billionaires.
You’d need to tax gifts as well or you’d only be taxing families with sudden deaths.
The reality is that we have giant gobs of tax exceptions for capital. The idea is to encourage real investment. As in, new businesses and capital goods that help with production.
I’d say less than 5% of the capital is applied usefully in this way. Simply applying those exceptions only to growth or new development of business or even for housing would make it more effective.
Should a capital discount be applied “to encourage investment.” In a building which is a century old? In particular because that’s now $1m that is not going towards development of real businesses, which often in the early phase are extremely short of capital. Same as ASX200 companies, who aren’t doing capital raises.
Kohler is still such a great journalist
Taxing inheritances is so dumb, it will ALWAYS be bypassed by the ultra rich via the same means they already use to dodge taxes.
You can start fixing inequality with these policies instead.
– Wealth-based taxes (Not income based)
– Adjusting steeper tax gradients (sorry ausfinance $300k+ earners)
– Closing offshore loopholes
– Closing corporate accounting loopholes
– Free/much cheaper education
– Resource royalties
– Limiting super to $3m & winding down SMSFs
– General simplification of tax codes
– Removing GST (Controversial, but such a dumb tax I can explain…)
– Lowering CGT on shares/ETFs and increasing CGT on unimproved property
The problem with inheritance tax is that those with the most assets just use trusts, so the middle class ends up being the ones paying
If they have an asset tax on trusts too then I’d support an inheritance tax
As an economist we have been literally crying out for tax reform for 3 decades without any support from the general public and therefore politicians.
Literally just doing these things would dramatically improve our economy.
1. Reduce CGT discount to 40%, or alternatively remove it completely and go back to the inflation adjustment method. Or alternatively if you want it to be very progressive but similar for the average joe then remove the CGT discount and allow people to split capital gains over multiple financial years. Many options, all with pros and cons, all though would make it a fairer system for regular wage earners.
2. Remove stamp duty and replace with unimproved land value tax. Stamp duty keeps people in inefficient housing for their work and or social life. Would likely lower carbon emissions too with less commuting.
3. Tighten rules on what can be claimed on the cost basis for negative gearing, it’s far too easy for people to turn highly taxed wages into low tax capital gains using negative gearing.
4. Reduce income tax with all the money saved.
lol, as if the people with money won’t find a loop hole to any new tax or increase in existing tax. They have the lawyers and accountants ready to solve the problem immediately.
New taxes / increased taxes will only hit the middle class and effectively destroy them creating a 2 class society. The mega wealthy and the super poor.
It’s such a joke,
Every article I see about solving these problems is taxing the working class into oblivion.
While no one has the balls to go after the corporations who are pillaging our, YEA OUR, natural resources.
All we do is infight and point fingers at those who are slightly better off, when those who are at the top end of the scale shouldn’t even be measured against the typical Australian.
Infighting is what they want.
We need a call to action against the organizations who are not paying for our resources.
Ffs, the beer tax generates more than our gas tax does, and Japan make money off buying our gas on on selling it.
Taxing inheritances will hurt the middle class. The top class will use lawyers to minimise any tax. The lower income will probably not be affected.
I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of what will be left to tax after aged care payments
They should remove the main residence CGT exemption, especially for deceased estates. It’s ridiculous that the children of wealthy parents can inherit a property worth millions and not pay a cent of tax. It’s become a system where the only way to own a home is to have rich parents.
The only way this is going to happen is if there is lobbying for it, loud, public and overwhelming lobbying. No government would risk the political storm introducing policies like this without any external influence, this is just ammunition for their opponents. There needs to be some external campaign pushing for these changes, getting support amongst the voting base for these changes before the government (or opposition) goes on to suggest them. Otherwise it’ll end up like the mining tax again, a good idea on paper, with moderate support from the voters that was just easily torn to shreds by those opposing it, and no-one backing the government with any similar level of lobbying.
Time for Labor to take a punt. Have another crack at resources taxes. Yeah, you’ll face the usual Gina et al buckets of cash driven advertising attack BUT you have the electoral margin to repel them. Use the tax boost to implement income inequality measures. It is electorally popular. It will be a vote winner. Next target the CEO’s and getting the super funds to commit to a percentage of social investment. Problem solved.