The Teal independent says the government must urgently address the demographic challenges facing Australia\u2019s tax system, following the release of her tax white paper. <\/p>\n
Independent federal member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender (pictured), discussed how the current tax settings in Australia are inhibiting the ability of younger Australians to get ahead financially at a recent Punters Politics event last week.<\/p>\n
It follows the release of her Personal Tax White Paper on 11 March, which proposed a detailed tax reform plan to make Australia a country where everyone can get ahead “off their own back\u201d. <\/p>\n
One of Spender\u2019s aims in her white paper was to rebalance the tax system to help younger Australians enter the property market.<\/p>\n
The proposal sought to rebalance the personal income tax system by reducing taxes on wages and salaries while cutting tax concessions on income from assets.<\/p>\n
This cut to income taxes for wages and salaries would be funded by reducing the capital gains tax discount (CGT) from 50 per cent to 30 per cent, ring-fencing negative gearing, setting a minimum tax rate for investment income and making changes to superannuation taxes. <\/p>\n
As previously reported by Accounting Times<\/a>, the reduction of the CGT discount also garnered support from the Greens, with Barbara Pocock<\/a> seeking to cut the CGT discount entirely.<\/p>\n Spender spoke at Politics at the Pub with Konrad from Punters Politics on 19 March, where she highlighted the key problems that her white paper aimed to address: a lack of financial security for younger Australians and high taxes being imposed on people under the most financial pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t had substantial tax reform for 25 years, and the current system is no longer fit for purpose,\u201d Spender said.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think everyone in this country should have access to housing. The biggest single social problem in this country is the unaffordability of housing.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf you make the choices that your parents or your grandparents did, you’re not going to get the same results. That’s the problem.\u201d <\/p>\n In a statement, Spender argued that the government\u2019s increased spending on health and aged care places a heavier burden on younger workers, opposing \u201cfantasy tax reform\u201d, which promises tax cuts without showing how they will fund them.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes it really make sense that the tax burden falls most heavily on younger people struggling to get established \u2013 who are likely also paying rent, saving for a deposit, raising children, and paying down HELP debts?\u201d<\/p>\n She added that when people believe the system is not on their side, they will stop believing in the system altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery dollar returned to working Australians through my proposed income tax cuts is raised by reducing concessions on investment income.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat will not only assist younger Australians, it will also improve productivity and address the long-term demographic challenges facing our tax system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Teal independent says the government must urgently address the demographic challenges facing Australia\u2019s tax system, following the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-575272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}