Taxation
Taxation is an important part of economic policy – not only in raising revenue for governments to spend, but also in influencing private saving, investment and spending decisions, and for affecting the distribution of income and wealth. Decisions as to what is (or isn’t taxed), and at what rate, are always controversial, and sometimes have unintended consequences.
Saul talks to Peter Switzer about housing prices, negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount
Housing, News, Taxation | 28th March 2017Peter Switzer | Switzer | 28th March 2017
The case for reducing the capital gain tax discount
Housing, Publications, Taxation | 7th June 2016Article originally published in ‘Around the House’, the newsletter of Shelter NSW, a housing advocacy group, in June 2016
Negative gearing simply a form of ‘tax avoidance’
Housing, Publications, Taxation | 31st March 2016Saul Eslake | The New Daily | 23rd March 2016 In a recent interview with the ABC’s Leigh Sales, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended negative gearing as “income tax 101”, by which he went on to explain as “a fundamental principle of tax law and has been forever that you can deduct from your income the […]
Labor’s negative gearing aims echo Coalition housing changes
Housing, Publications, Taxation | 23rd March 2016Saul Eslake | The New Daily | 23rd March 2016 Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been vocal in decrying the Labor Opposition’s plans to restrict negative gearing to investors buying new properties, claiming it will lead to a crash in the price of existing housing. But the evidence is against this hypothesis. Over the last five […]
Negative gearing proponents’ claims don’t stack up
Publications, Taxation | 15th March 2016Saul Eslake | The New Daily | 16th March 2016 Negative gearing policy has been a battleground for many years and its emergence as a hot button issue in the upcoming federal election has brought the friends and enemies of the practice into the field once more. Some are warning about “unintended consequences” which they say […]
The case against negative gearing
Publications, Taxation | 18th February 2016Op-ed article published in the Australian Financial Review, 18th February 2016, alongside an opposing viewpoint from Ken Morrison, CEO of the Property Council of Australia
Reforming the Australian Taxation System: A Principled Approach
Taxation | 22nd September 2015Address to the Australian Financial Review’s Tax Reform Summit, 22nd September 2015
Small businesses aren’t really the ‘engine room’ of the economy, and don’t deserve preferential tax treatment
Taxation | 15th August 2015Article published in ‘Management Today’, the magazine of the Australian Institute of Management, August 2015