Marty

Some further thoughts on the Federal Budget and the tax reform debate. A lot of the outrage over Labor’s proposed CGT and trust changes ignores a basic question: why should people earning the same income pay vastly different tax depending on how they earn it? Why should someone earning $100,000 through wages pay more tax than someone earning $100,000 through capital gains, trust distributions or investment structures? For decades Australia’s tax system has heavily favoured speculative investment, especially existing housing. Since the Howard-era changes in 1999, investors in detached housing have often paid far less tax on gains than workers pay on wages. Negative gearing and the 50% CGT discount encouraged borrowing into existing property rather than productive investment or new housing supply. The current reforms attempt to rebalance that system. Critics claim this destroys aspiration or punishes young Australians, but the actual data tells a different story. Only a small percentage of under-35s report capital gains or own negatively geared investment properties. Meanwhile the biggest beneficiaries of current concessions are overwhelmingly high-income earners and wealthy asset holders. The claim that government is becoming a “47% shareholder” in businesses is also nonsense. CGT only applies to profits on sale, not the total value of a business, and only at the top marginal rates after inflation adjustments. The trust reforms raise the same fairness question. Why should people able to split income through trusts pay less tax than ordinary wage earners who cannot? Trusts have legitimate business and asset-protection purposes, but tax minimisation should not be the primary one. Even economist Saul Eslake — who spent decades as chief economist for ANZ and Bank of America Merrill Lynch argues the reforms increase equity overall, while still allowing concessions for genuinely productive investment like new housing and startups. The debate ultimately comes down to whether Australia’s tax system should keep rewarding speculative wealth accumulation more generously than ordinary work.

@dewalke @AustralianLabor @AlanKohler @abcnews You seem to be suggesting investment gains should be included as normal income and taxed at the same rate?

Teen suicides have increased 3x since the 1950s. Teen suicides increase during the school year, ease up a little bit over Christmas break and summer break, and then the back-to-school season is back to suicide season. The seasonal pattern stops at high school graduation. What could be the cause?

@sama Housing affordability, making humans more entrepreneurial, making government red tape very fast to get through.

what problem do you most hope AI will solve in the future? maybe we can help!

@darwonboy Don't you understand this platform, you shit post on shit posts. Gotta help with the engagement .

@jenkins_bevan I tell you what, ill trade you your zero real world experience for a bug bag of shush muppet. Its a meme. Stop taking everything you read online so seriously.

Im going to start a new business. Where do I send the bill to for the Australian governments 50% share holding? If i project that i will be able to sell the business for $3 million inflation adjusted in 10 years time i should be able to charge the Asutralian government $1.5 million for them being my silent partner......

@SciGuySpace No pressure though 😂

The stakes for this week's Starship launch are high. The US commercial space industry is depending on lower launch costs and higher capacity. NASA’s lunar ambitions, to a great degree, hinge on its success. And the stakes are highest of all for SpaceX. arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/…

@MichelleAR4118 @AlboMP Your acting like the existing house just vanishes. Investors buy less established properties which slows the artificial price inflation that has been happening for decades and allows renters to purchase a property. -1 house from the pool -1 family. Net negative effect for renters

Even if some investors pivot to new builds, the policy still slashes demand for established homes, meaning fewer rentals overall right now. New construction takes years, faces massive delays and costs, and doesn't instantly replace what gets removed from the pool. That’s why it extends the rental crisis instead of fixing it. The addition is a long way away. The subtraction happens today. Labor is putting revenue before housing. There's no way to dress that up. That is what they've done.

We're changing property investor tax breaks to give first home buyers a fair go. Here’s why.

@MichelleAR4118 @AlboMP Then the investor who still wants negative gearing instead builds new houses since they can't get it on existing builds and those new builds add to the rental pool. So net negative and then positive addition.

@jenkins_bevan @AlboMP They move out of their old rental, one shuffle. But the investor property they bought is now permanently removed from the rental pool forever. Labors own modelling admits it will tighten supply.

@ausstockchick Then lower my income tax too because I don't want to pay as much tax on my earnings. No fair it only counts for capital gains.

Albo needs to change the announced CGT changes to apply to housing only. There is no reason to apply it to stocks. It’s pure greed. #auspol

@MichelleAR4118 @AlboMP Where was the first home buyer living, where did they move out from?

If a landlord sells, the policy hands it straight to a first-home buyer. One less rental, exactly as intended. Only a genius would shrink rentals in the middle of a housing crisis. Rental tenants do not have a spare $60,000+ floating around in their bank accounts. You're naive if you believe that won't affect rental supply.

@Silverback_MD Buy new house or build for investments, you will get the full negative gearing. 🤷

lol My mates and I are doctors in our 20s/30s/40s starting off our careers. Absolutely everyone is gobsmacked at the budget changes. Genuinely feels like our generation will get punished for working smart or hard. None of us own investment properties yet - what’s the point now? How do we get ahead now? What was the financial incentive to sacrifice our 20s to train? It feels like all the worst aspects of communism with none of the benefits….. No incentivised housing/travel/childcare for doctors No one in my group is having kids Yet our alcoholic patients are on their 4th or 5th - supported via government programs What a joke Speedrunning civilisational demise

@MichelleAR4118 @AlboMP Who buys the house if a landlord sells? Another landlord or an owner occupier... So net no effect on rental supply.

Australia is in a housing crisis with record rents and low vacancies, yet restricting negative gearing and CGT on established properties will reduce rental supply. Fewer investors will buy existing homes, some landlords will sell, and Treasury expects tens of thousands fewer homes built overall. This shrinks available rentals when we need far more supply. It's not how you fix a crisis.

@AshPolitik People in this thread don't understand. Negative gearing = Higher house prices. You can see it in the data. Wave your hands all day about stopping investment, just look at house prices before and after negative gearing.

Bottom 80% who largely don't own investment properties are paying for the the tax revenue that funds negative gearing rebates, CGT discounts, & depreciation write-offs flowing predominantly to the top 20% who do own investment properties. Lower to middle income workers are subsidising a tax concession system they are statistically excluded from benefiting from.

@everyonecalmdwn @AshPolitik The top 20% pay the same tax. They just earn more so enter the higher tax brackets. The first ~$30k is tax free, even for the highest earning. Do we want lower house prices? If yes remove negative gearing (responsibly). Negative gearing = higher house prices.

You clearly didn’t pay attention in economics. No one is “paying” anything for a start, negative gearing isnt a cheque handed out from the government, like your Newstart allowance. Secondly the top 20% of taxpayers pay about 61% of personal income tax, so if anyone is “funding” lost revenue, it is disproportionately the same higher-income group being accused of receiving it.

@allwright99 @AshPolitik Your numbers are correct. However occupancy rates more heavily influence rents with no evidence of a benefit to renters from negative gearing.

@AshPolitik Unless they rent - those things help providers keep rents down rather than all costs being passed on. ~70% of private rental providers have 1 property ~20% have 2. The majority are ma and pa, doing what governments have encouraged them to do for their financial future.

@MickamiousG This issue is it creates unnatural demand in property market and first home buyers have to compete on buying a dogbox with investors who are out to reduce their tax. Meanwhile young Australians a met with the prospect of renting for life since housing is not affordable.

Honestly, If the Government remove Negative Gearing, what other methods do Australians have other than throwing money into their Super to try reduce their taxes further?? What I’m getting at here is that the options in trying to reduce your tax are now becoming more and more limited than any other time in history. So if Negative Gearing is removed as an option, then what have you got left? Of course the Government will now start promoting for you to throw your money into your Super Funds as an option because then this helps to generate more investment money for infrastructure like renewable projects, housing etc. Yes negative gearing has no doubt been abused, I have absolutely no doubt, but it’s not the sole problem here. Australians continually get taxed harder year on year and it seems even more options are being taken away from them to try reduce their own taxes

@chrisgpt Olj

Codex made me money without me doing anything.. Huge turning point for me today, I asked Codex to go off and make me $5. It went out, found a small open-source security/audit bounty path, made a legit PR, followed up with the maintainer, kept my payment details private - (without me asking), handled the GitHub proof/verification loop, and got the work merged. it spent about 22 hours working on multiple security audits. Today I received my first payment from that experiment: $16.88. That’s a $506.40/month run-rate if repeated daily. Not life-changing money yet, but it's deeply exciting to live out Sam Altman's vision for AI, where it will just go out and make money for you. It's awesome to start to see the beginning of that.

@BoringBiz_ 100% on point assuming previously uneconomic work now become ecomical in this scenario... Which there is always more value to add in my experience.

The AI labor replacement theory makes absolutely no sense to me Here is the simple math Let’s say an engineer making $300K/yr was generating $500K in P&L output for me. Now I arm that engineer with $20K in input to make him 20% more productive My total engineering cost goes to $320K/yr but the output is now $600K (+20%) Because of AI, my ROI on hiring engineers just went up massively. As a CEO, that should make me want to hire more engineers, not less What am I missing here? Genuinely curious about people’s thoughts