Brent Hodgson

In a week of financially illiterate tax gripes, this one is a CLANGER! Someone on $190,001 - the start of the top (47%) marginal tax rate - pays 28.3% on their total income (or 1.4 days). The 47% rate only applies to each $1 over $190k Tax 101, & this guy SETS state taxes.

@TMFScottP The rarity of thoughtful, or even numerically-literate responses to the change has been stark. I assumed more there was more hard-nosed rationalism - and frankly business intelligence - in the business community. Seems a lot are confessing they were lucky more than smart.

The blatant self-interest dressed up as national interest on NG and CGT is not surprising but pretty ordinary. Yes, there are some who genuinely think the changes aren't in the national interest... but they're the exception, not the rule. It's fair for asset owners to pay more

@Jeanetteandco Quite a few, and not just from the Democratic People's Republic of the Northern Beaches

@BrentHodgson Aren't there a few migrants in Kooyong? 😉

Abbott is a popular figure in Kooyong, with deep local roots in the Kooyong Surf Life Saving Club and Kooyong NSW RFS branch, and a longstanding commitment to nuanced clean energy & women's health rights policy. If he can't win Warringah, Kooyong would be his next best shot.

@JNsh45186293 @jillethelmurray Preposterous!

@pixeltoofar I think the nippers are out rattling cans as we speak

@BrentHodgson When is the next fundraising appeal for the Kooyong Surf Life Saving Club?

@jillethelmurray Only when it's swimmable. Kooyong's best beach for three months of the year.

@BrentHodgson Has he even been to Fritsch Holzer?

1 in 134 million odds vs 5-6% RROR in shares. …practically a rounding error 🫠

@HeadLenn @aaronsmith @NoelWhittaker What you describe is a “washing machine arrangement”. This HAS been prosecuted recently, and links to a slightly different section of the act: s.100A Part IVA (dominant purpose) is harder to prosecute = rare. 100A is typically much simpler to trace, as your facts underscore.

@BrentHodgson @aaronsmith @NoelWhittaker It amazes me why Part IVa hasn’t been used many times previously. À retired couple have a son a corporate lawyer who earns 7 figure Somers plus. Yet the retired couple are beneficiaries with $s annually. But then the funds (less tax) are returned to son. The money trail is there.

I'm running numbers on family trusts. If the trust owned by mum, dad, and 19-year-old daughter earns $180,000 a year and they distribute $60,000 to each the tax will be three times $9,000 = $27000. At 30% flat, it's $54,000. That's double - The only way out is to change distributions to wages, but they must be able to justify the wage. It's a shameful attack on business

@ProjVictoria @NoelWhittaker You’re absolutely correct. Guardian AIT sharpened 100A significantly - particularly where the 19 year old daughter in Noel’s scenario didn’t actually receive the ultimate benefit of the distribution. But who are we mere mortals to question Noel’s eminence in this field. 🤷‍♂️

Noel would be aware of the anti-avoidance and dominant purpose provisions in Part IVA. If tax minimisation is the dominant purpose of a family trust (as it’s the dominant argument Noel makes) then the ATO can ALREADY strip the entire tax treatment and charge a 45% trustee penalty on invalid distributions, plus interest and penalties. The argument Noel’s making - though carefully crafted to maximise a worst case scenario that still lands better off than PAYG taxpayers can access - is probably the most self-incriminatory argument you or your adviser could make publicly. Not least of all because it admits the wage justification doesn’t stand. That it’s “devastating” exposes the dominant purpose - as it wouldn’t be devastating to a family trust that held a commercial, equitable distribution, or family wealth planning justification as their dominant purpose. The cover that the ATO has rarely penalised family trusts for aggressively distributing in line with a tax avoidance pattern has worked largely because it’s quietly defensible a trust has a legitimate dominant purpose if it doesn’t say the quiet part out loud - the operative word being QUIET. This is the opposite: strutting confidently into a legal trap with all the survival instinct of an ACME-enabled Wile E. Coyote. Any adviser worth their salt would AT BEST be telling their client to take the hit quietly - or use the 3 year grace period to quietly structure out of the trust entirely - as publicly confessing to the nature of the Part IVA rort risks an unfriendly audit and torches whatever quiet protections the Trust may have. Then again, I’m not an expert wealth and tax advisor, so.. 🤷‍♂️

@missrobinson @Elias_Hallaj @NoelWhittaker Best-selling author ≠ best-thinking author

@NoelWhittaker The numbers don't lie, Noel.

Remember, intergenerational inequality is a social construct invented by Labor to give them another class of victims to help

@MoiraDeemingMP @aaronsmith Would you do it if someone else asked? Or is this more of a generic refusal to present any alternative policy position on this issue?

@aaronsmith I will if it’s a waste of my time because you are just an internet troll.

@aaronsmith Is the issue talent? Or something else? E.g. If the current crop of candidates is successful, will Jessanomics be improved? Or not so?

Jessanomics is not an economic plan. It's a press release with a deficit. Wilson wants the credit for hard truths without telling a single one. Years in opposition and this is the pitch: trust us, the numbers work, please don't ask which numbers. /end

Jess Wilson has delivered her budget reply and introduced Victoria to a new economic doctrine. Welcome to Jessanomics: the debt is a crisis, the answer is tax cuts, the working has been omitted for brevity. A thread....🧵 /1

What changed, Tim? (Aside from the 31.1% drop in the Liberal Primary last night.)

@pixeltoofar @jonobri @sxymlbgy I’m in Camberwell Junction activity zone amidst existing buildings of up to 14 storeys.

@jonobri @sxymlbgy @BrentHodgson is this your area?

Another day, another urban planning academic gleefully oblivious to markets, economics, and how development actually works. Expensive land is a price signal telling you to build density. We should take those signals seriously, and let people build where it is feasible.

@PhilKelly959078 Pretty sure One Nation has elected more independents to parliament than any other party

@BrentHodgson If he wins, he will not be in One Nation for too long.

From NAT, to Labor donor and aspiring candidate, to seeking IND candidacy, to endorsing Milthorpe herself, to running against her for a party whose core policies he disagrees with… So many positions they ought to call him the Farmer Sutra. theguardian.com/australia-news…

@tulkatide I think the challenge in Farrer there’s a lot of it clashing against a lack of it - and it’s issues like the ones you’ve raised that are the dividing line.

@BrentHodgson All of us voters OUTSIDE of Farrer are a bit pleased we ain’t in that seat. Far far too much harmony, cohesion, joy, political literacy and sheer wonder. (In brackets here, I insert the obvious sarcasm warning). I would hate for anything to be lost in translation).

@strangerous10 @toni_symonds So PHON didn’t pass the Albury pub test 😮