One of the country\u2019s leading tax experts says the explosion in housing wealth has put Australia on the path towards a neo-feudal society where your prosperity depends in large part whether your parents own land or property.<\/p>\n
The director of the Australian National University\u2019s Tax<\/a> and Transfer Policy Institute, Bob Breunig, said \u201cthat\u2019s the trajectory we\u2019re on\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we are back to pre-French Revolution times, but I am worried about that,\u201d he said during a second day of hearings by a parliamentary committee into the operation of the capital gains tax.<\/p>\n \u201cWe often frame the equality problem as an intergenerational one, an old versus young problem, which it\u2019s not really.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIf you are young and your parents have a lot of assets, those assets will eventually come to you. So the real inequality is between people in the same generation, those who have assets and those who don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Breunig in May 2025 authored an influential report<\/a> showing how the tax and transfer system has become more generous to older Australians over recent generations.<\/p>\n Breunig said the goal of reform aimed at improving the equity of the tax system was not to \u201cpunish\u201d old people.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all want to live in a country where old people are rich; we should incentivise people to work hard and save during their lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n But he said tax and transfer settings had not moved with the times.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be that being old meant that you were poor and so we have a lot of money that we transfer to older people simply because they are old. But a lot of old people aren\u2019t poor any more, but we are still transferring money to them as if they were poor,\u201d Breunig said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo this idea of old being a tag for poverty, we need to move beyond and now we need to say let\u2019s target that assistance to people who really need it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Greens-led committee has focused heavily on the role the generous 50% capital gains tax discount has exacerbated the housing affordability<\/a> crisis by funnelling speculative investment into residential property<\/a>.<\/p>\n