Furious Fong

The single biggest winner from the budget: the tax-free owner-occupied home, which is where people will put their money. After the budget doubles the capital gains tax on productive businesses/assets from circa 23.5% to 46-47%, investors will understandably pull money from businesses, shares, commercial property and rental housing and plough it into their tax-free owner-occupied home. It's a great way to push up the prices of these houses. On the other hand, cutting negative gearing while also doubling CGT makes investing in rental properties extremely unattractive. It hammers the capital gain upside on any asset: shares, commercial property, the small or medium sized business you built, venture capital and private equity. It will give Australia the most unattractive capital gains tax in the WORLD (see table below)! So the government's policies will (1) push up owner-occupied house prices, (2) push up rents, and (3) reduce the capital available for investing in any small, medium or large sized business that is driving employment, innovation, growth and productivity/prosperity. Investors will go to other countries where they pay half the capital gains tax, or less. Since these pollies have never worked a day of their lives in the private sector, it is no surprise that when they decide to completely and unilaterally rewrite the entire tax system for all investors and businesses -- after promising before the last election more than 50 times NOT to change the capital gains tax and negative gearing rules -- that they would blow the entire Aussie economy up... Your best bet will be to buy a house, live in it, and hope they keep dropping 500,000 new people into the country every year to pump-up prices...