"A couple who owns their home still needs a combined $730,000 in super to enjoy a comfortable retirement, according to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.
“Around 92 per cent of Australians with super had a balance of less than $500,000 in 2022/23, according to data collected by the Australian Tax Office.”
This is poor writing. It compares a retired couple with an individual of any (working) age. It’s meaningless, but is meant to make you think most Australians won’t be able to live a comfortable life in retirement.
Can we start with tightening/closing the tax/finance loopholes being abused. Negative gearing, capiital gains tax, mineral resource rent tax. There’s plenty of stuff in the system we can clean up.
Whether something is a loophole or not is somewhat subjective. The things you mentioned were added deliberately, and maybe they should change, but they’re not loopholes in the sense of “abuses they didn’t think were possible when making the law”
Ageist bullshit is exactly the same as all other bigotry. Fuck that bullshit.
The people who should be taxed more are the rich and their huge companies. They own the media and set the agenda. They own some of the politicians and they threaten other politicians with opposition from ad campaigns and media opposition if they don’t get their way. They fund massive misinformation campaigns and populist right wing politicians who claim they are there for the little people. Their are trying their hardest to kill democracy.
Our tax system should be fair. It isn’t. Those who can afford to pay the most often pay very little. The party created to represent working Australians is terrified into inaction despite having a massive mandate and no effective opposition. What does that say? This is not a time for complacency. All the gains made by ordinary working Australians are at stake.
Our tax system should be fair. It isn’t. Those who can afford to pay the most often pay very little.
The point of the article is that the current tax system isn’t fair, and instead it privileges wealthy older Australians:
Generous tax arrangements have also allowed older Australians to accumulate significant wealth and income linked to their real estate and superannuation assets.
Despite this growing wealth, the tax system has not adjusted, instead providing increased support for older generations, a working paper from the Australian National University’s (ANU) Tax and Transfer Policy Institute last year found.
Start with the billionaires. That may be good enough to solve most of your problems.
or just tax the rich more.
No, it’s not time to tax older people more. It’s time to close the loopholes that allow companies to avoid paying tax.
As for people, it’s time to lower income tax rates significantly and increase usage taxes.
Indeed, I agree with you. Tax avoidance is rife, be nice if we tightened up regs and legislation and enforced it more than we have been.
If we’re going to lower income tax more than we already have recently. Let’s increase the tax-free threshold, that way everyone benefits from low income earners to high.
See also (often foreign) mining companies paying fuck all for resources. We really need to take a page out of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund book.
Great. Just as I’m getting older.
They better have income/asset tests on it or I’ll be out on the streets.
And if they fuck around with my meager super which was effectively taken out of my wages when I earned it, and then take more away before I can get my hands on it, I will be so pissed off.
you only just started getting older? 😁
Well, I’m trying to convince myself that 😒
Wait, wtf is this article SBS?? Why TF is the suggestion to tax older Aussies instead of making the corpos actually pay their fair share. Holy shit liberals will literally throw our older Aussies in the fucking bin before they consider implementing progressive taxation. Ffs, if Australia nationalised our mining sector, Aussies would be the richest citizens on earth! But nah fuck all that hey, better to just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze till the only option left is extreme violence.
There is a balance between not taxing our resources (Australia) and overtaxing or nationalising them (Venezuela). I’m guessing something like Norway levels would be good.
Why Norway instead of Alaska or Saudi Arabia? We could afford universal basic income for all Aussies easily if we nationalised our raw resources. What balance are you trying to strike here? Worried we’ll run out of oligarchs or smth?
Yeah, no oligarchs in Saudi…?
TBH Norway is a nice place, despite the weather.
You realise you are making the same case as Maduro? It hasn’t worked so well for them.Not defending Saudi arabia, just highlighting how rich their welfare system is.
I’m sure Norway is nice, I think Australia could learn from them and all these other systems and design one for ourselves that works.
Does anyone have a link to the tax on super over $300m legislation? I seem to remember it getting altered a fair bit before it got up but I can’t (be bothered to) find it.
More taxing of capital/assets please.$300mil? I think you mean $3mil?
Yeah. There was something that they lost from the original too.
Plus they added a change with inflation.They wanted to tax unrealised gains, and their plans weren’t indexed so every year the lower classes would get closer and closer to being affected. Thank god it didn’t go through. Taxing unrealised gains is one of the dumbest things anyone has ever suggested.
