Peter Roberts

The chart below shows the effective capital gains tax rate facing a business owner who invests $250,000 upfront, holds for 10 years, and then exits at different valuations. The result is striking: under Labor’s proposed CGT changes, Australian founders and investors would face an effective tax rate of up to 46% — roughly double the burden faced in most comparable markets, including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. And this is not just a founder problem. The same logic applies across all small, medium and large businesses, and any asset, including listed equities, property, private equity, venture capital and crypto. If these changes proceed, Australia will become one of the least attractive places in the developed world to build, invest, take risk and realise gains. The one major asset still sitting outside this tax net is the owner-occupied home, which remains CGT-exempt. That creates a powerful distortion. If investment properties, businesses, shares, commercial property and other assets are hit with materially higher effective CGT rates, capital will rationally look for shelter in the family home. The likely result: less capital for startups and productive enterprise, lower productivity, more pressure on rents as investors retreat from housing, higher inflation and interest rates, weaker demand for risk assets, and even more money being recycled into owner-occupied property — the last great tax haven in Australia. In short: this is not just a profound increase in the tax burden, with zero consultation in the name of giving imprudent politicians more money to waste. It is a major repricing of risk-taking in Australia. It is not reform: it is highly regressive, as it seeks to punish entrepreneurial success, which is the key driver of long-term jobs, incomes, growth and prosperity. It does not boost productivity: it destroys it by actively discouraging innovation and business creation. It will not lower the cost of living: it will lift it by boosting rents and making us much more inefficient. It will not reduce interest rates: alongside rampant and reckless government spending and record migration, it will pressure the RBA to raise our mortgage repayments. What is perhaps most shocking is that only 12 months ago this government was elected on the basis promising to never make these changes...