Sir lastnail wrote on Sep 27^th, 2024 at 12:06pm:



Selling into a market with very few buyers?

I don't think so.

The easiest way to recover the tax losses is to raise the rent. 

Forcing investors to build more properties could force rent prices down but increasing availability and reducing rental demand as renters purchase cheaper property because of investors leaving that part of the market.

OH and remember that Negative gearing means making a loss on investment. It is often real dumb to do it when you can make a tidy profit instead.

John Smith wrote on Sep 26^th, 2024 at 1:32pm:



However John Howard took the GST to an election.  And won!

I'm in two minds about negative gearing.  On the one hand, my older son has several rental properties in two states.  He is a great landlord - but not all tenants are great!  All his properties were neutrally geared - in fact one property was even positively geared. 

However he had to negatively gear one property on the Central Coast that the tenant burnt down.  That house had several bad tenants, one after the other.  So the insurance company had to build him a new house which he promptly sold.  Why put bad tenants in a new house to wreck it?  You expect the property managers to do the right thing but lots of them are hopeless.   

The most concerning problem however is that young people today will never be able to afford to buy a home unless they have rich parents.  While most people are struggling through the cost of living crisis, the govt gave property investors $85 billion in tax breaks over the past decade.  And according to Michael West Media, the cost of negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts will mean property investors will reap $165 billion over the next decade! 

And the bulk of super tax breaks and subsidies totalling $40 billion annually, go to wealthy retirees!  Not to pensioners or workers.  Meaning that the superannuation system is also exploited as a giant tax shelter for wealthy Aussies to pass on their tax free super to the kids.

As Michael West Media asks - is this fair?  Or has the "fair go" gone? 

Aquarius wrote on Sep 27^th, 2024 at 12:55pm:



what we got was not what he took to the election

LOL

Albo caught out LYING again.

Having suggested that Treasury initiated the Negative Gearing changes modelling ...

Now the truth comes out. Gomer Chalmers initiated it. 


Treasurer Jim Chalmers set the cat amongst the pidgeons by ordering the departmental modelling.  (ABC News: Adam Kennedy)

Treasurer Jim Chalmers concedes he asked Treasury for negative gearing modelling

By political reporter Courtney Gould

Treasurer Jim Chalmers conceded he asked his department to model the impact of changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.

About 1.1 million Australians had a negatively geared property in 2020-21, according to Australian Taxation Office data.

Jim Chalmers has conceded he tasked Treasury officials to look at options to scale back negative gearing, saying it was not "unusual" and again leaving the door open to revisiting the reforms.

A case of a political whodunnit emerged this week following reports the government was awaiting departmental modelling about the impact of changes to the tax break and the capital gains tax concessions.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, the treasurer put the case to bed by confirming he requested the modelling and the department did not act on its own accord.

"It is not unusual at all for governments or for treasurers to get advice on contentious issues which are in the public domain including in the parliament," Mr Chalmers said.

Labor has spent the past three days fending off speculation it is looking to scale back the tax breaks. By Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was yet to definitively rule it out.

"Just for clarity, what we are doing is what we have before the parliament. So I talk about what we're doing, not what we're not doing," he told reporters in Melbourne.

He twice pivoted questions to focus on the Senate stalemate on the government's housing policies.

It came a day after Mr Albanese raised doubts about the merits of reforms to the tax breaks, citing work by the Property Council showing less generous tax arrangements would lead to less new housing.

"That's the issue. We just want to get on with our plan of building more homes," he said.


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-27/jim-chalmers-negative-gearing-modelling/1...

lee wrote on Sep 27^th, 2024 at 1:53pm:


Tent City.

48 hours of confusion on negative gearing this week has damaged Labor's brand

By Jacob Greber

Topic:Housing Policy

Sat 28 Sep


We saw 48 hours of confusion this week over whether Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese were changing their negative gearing policy.  (ABC News, AAP)

Whether accidental lab leak or deliberate but decidedly cack-handed kite-flying exercise, the government's handling of its negative gearing push has damaged the Labor brand.

That's certainly the feeling from inside parts of the party. What on earth just happened this week, is one response.

Labor's inability to come clean about who ordered the Treasury to work on the topic – or even that it was commissioned at all – left the government and prime minister Anthony Albanese smeared as tricky, dissembling and guilty of treating voters with contempt.

If the government has made a high-level decision to at least revisit options on how to curb negative gearing tax concessions for property investors – they would be better served coming clean and owning it.

Instead, for the best part of two days following a story in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday about how Labor asked public servants to work up options, Albanese and his treasurer went into full The Thick of It mode.

Like one of Armando Iannucci's satirical scripts, Albanese and his ministers clung to the present tense like men on a raft losing air.

"We have a broad and ambitious housing policy already, and those changes aren't part of it," said Jim Chalmers on Friday.

It's not policy, in other words. Until it becomes so. It was the same sophistry that preceded the federal government's decision to curb superannuation concessions and its overhaul of stage three tax cuts.

For the best part of two years the latter was not a "current" policy. And then it was.

48 hours of confusion
The original negative gearing story by James Massola and David Crowe set off more than 48 hours of confusion as Albanese and Chalmers struggled to get their lines straight.

Albanese's initial reaction at a press conference in Launceston was that public servants "from time to time" look at policy ideas.

Inside the politics surrounding Labor's hypothetical negative gearing reforms
He portrayed it as a normal part of business, Treasury as some kind of Skunk Works, or ideas laboratory, and whoops, it looks like one of their experiments has escaped the lab.

Hours later on Sydney ABC radio Richard Glover pressed the PM about whether Chalmers had ordered the work.

"I don't know because I'm not the treasurer," he replied, adding that Chalmers was on his way to China.

Well, will you ask him once he lands, Glover countered. "You could ask him yourself," Albanese replied.

The following morning, Albanese was asked by ABC News Breakfast whether he was considering taking negative gearing reform and capital gains tax reform to the next election.

"No, we're not," he said.

Which might have settled things, except that by Friday morning Albanese was again referring to the present tense of current policy and expressly refusing to rule out a change on negative gearing in the future.

"I'm saying what we are doing, and I'm saying that is our focus, and our focus is on that," Albanese told reporters, perhaps suppressing a Malcolm Tucker expletive or three.

Speaking from China, Chalmers on Friday effectively admitted it was he who asked Treasury officials to work up negative gearing reform options.

"It is not unusual at all for governments or for treasurers to get advice on contentious issues which are in the public domain, including in the parliament," he said.

Clock is ticking for Labor
So where does that leave us?

Tellingly, several Labor backbenchers were given the green light to speak in support of reforming negative gearing. Most were from electorates threatened by Greens or Teals.

The thought of paring back what is seen as an unfair tax concession favoured by surgeons and baby boomers has great traction in those seats.

But for another set of voices – aspiration-belt Labor MPs – the notion that the government wants to tinker with a deeply popular and trusted middle-class pathway to the good life is a another blow to the Labor brand.

"It's very unhelpful in the places we need," said one Labor MP.

"It's part of the life-plan for many people, the aspirational voters in the suburbs. This is not what people think in Grayndler, Sydney or any of the Green seats.

"You're now kicking the ladder away".

One view inside Labor is that the story was leaked by the treasurer, who is increasingly anxious about his political legacy. The clock on Labor is ticking, with polls suggesting a hung parliament is a distinct possibility.

That may mean it's now or never for the treasurer, goes the thinking.

Certainly, he has struggled to get key elements of his reform agenda into law, including curbs on superannuation accounts above $1.6 million and an overhaul of the Reserve Bank of Australia's governance structures.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-28/negative-gearing-confusion-has-damaged-la...


Another stuff-up and/or a powerplay between Gomer and Albo?


NEVER UNDERESTIMATE LABOR'S ABILITY TO SELF-DESTRUCT.