Headache for Labor as unions demand tax changes to negative gearing, family trusts

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers are facing a political headache as the peak body for unions pushes for drastic reductions in negative gearing and higher taxes on family trusts – moves that are being fiercely resisted by the business lobby.

Adding to Labor’s challenge is a fresh call from the Productivity Commission to relitigate a carbon price at the government’s upcoming economic roundtable on making Australia more productive, while calling for it to ditch popular subsidies for electric vehicles.

Senior Labor minister Murray Watt on Sunday said his government would not rule out any ideas before industry and union figures gathered in Canberra later in August, but stressed it was looking for consensus on thorny issues.

The ACTU’s agenda is unlikely to win corporate or government support, but national secretary Sally McManus – who will occupy one of the union’s two seats at the roundtable – said younger generations priced out of an increasingly expensive housing market had to be paramount in any discussion about productivity reform.

“This is the most important issue when it comes to addressing living standards, given what we have now is particularly unfair for younger generations,” she told this masthead. “People need to be able to live near where they work.”

Under the ACTU proposal, released on Sunday, negative gearing and the 50 per cent capital gains tax concession would be restricted to a single property. Existing investors would be grandfathered from the changes for five years.

The nation’s oil and gas companies would face a 25 per cent “energy levy” on exports of LNG, while a $20 million cap would be set for businesses that claim fuel tax credits. The ACTU also wants millionaires and family trusts to pay at least 25 per cent of their income in tax.

Figures released last month by the Australian Taxation Office revealed that 91 people in the 2022-23 financial year had income of more than $1 million but paid no tax. While many financial trusts pay at least 25 per cent in tax, the union movement wants that set as a minimum level.

Combined, the union says its ideas raise up to $25 billion in revenue that could be pumped back into services such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme and healthcare. It also backed reforms to regulations for planning and construction to get more properties built.

Asked whether the government was open to changing tax concessions for property investors on Sunday, Watt said its tax policies had not changed.

“When it comes to the roundtable, what we’ve said is that we don’t want to be unfairly limiting the kind of ideas that can be discussed, and we haven’t been getting into ruling things in or ruling things out,” he said.

“There’ll be a really terrific opportunity for all of these ideas from unions, from businesses, from think tanks, to be discussed at the roundtable. And what we’re looking to do is to build consensus across the community on all of these kind of issues.”

But the Business Council of Australia’s chief executive, Bran Black, quickly rejected the ACTU’s submission.“Ad hoc tax grabs are the opposite of supporting higher living standards for all Australians,” he said on Sunday.

“This magic pudding approach of taxing more to fix productivity should be dismissed if we are serious about solutions at the roundtable.”

The BCA and other industry groups also lashed a suggestion from the Productivity Commission last week to cut the company tax rate while introducing a world-first cashflow tax.

The commission will provoke industry further on Monday, when it releases its second of five reports, this time focusing on the clean energy transition. It has been an advocate of an economy-wide carbon price for almost two decades, arguing it is the most cost-effective and quickest way to reduce emissions.

In its report, the commission argues for the creation of an independent agency that would effectively set the “implied carbon prices needed to meet Australia’s emissions targets”. Farmers and household gas whitegoods would get caught up in the commission’s plan in what would prove a politically fraught move.

The commission also backs broadening the safeguard mechanism – a requirement on firms that emit 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year – and reducing the emissions limit. It says a limit of 25,000 tonnes a year would be “reasonable”.

One of the government’s most popular greenhouse-cutting policies has been fringe benefits tax exemptions on electric vehicles. But the commission says such subsidies, including the FBT exemption and state stamp duty concessions, should be axed.

The National Automotive Leasing and Salary Packaging Association pushed back, saying uptake was greatest in outer working-class suburbs. “It’s the key national policy initiative that has driven EV demand to where it is today – without it demand would materially stall,” they said.

The commission also backs an overhaul of the nation’s environmental laws, including the creation of stricter deadlines for energy transition projects to be approved and the creation of a bureaucrat “strike team” to clear through red tape currently delaying renewable projects.

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