{"id":684879,"date":"2026-05-21T09:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684879\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:34:10","slug":"australias-top-tax-bracket-why-critics-say-the-47-per-cent-rate-is-hitting-middle-class-earners-too-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684879\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s top tax bracket: Why critics say the 47 per cent rate is hitting middle-class earners too hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The federal government\u2019s refusal to lift income tax brackets in line with inflation means every dollar earned today above $190,000 is taxed at 47 per cent, instead of the top rate kicking in at more than $280,000.<\/p>\n<p>The top income tax threshold now sits at the lowest inflation-adjusted level in 20 years. It would be $281,450 by now if it had kept up with inflation since 2008-09, the last time high earners had their top income tax threshold substantially increased under changes initiated by the Howard government.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government\u2019s refusal to lift income tax brackets in line with inflation means every dollar earned today&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-684879","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\/684879","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=684879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}