Aspiration means having a roof, not a write-off
The government’s tax reform plan has attracted a sharp response from investors, but it could go some way to alleviating the housing crisis.
The public discourse over the past week has been completely dominated by an industrial-scale tantrum from Australia’s venture capital elite. Listening to wealthy investors and founders declare that winding back the 50% capital gains tax (CGT) discount will be the death of Australia’s business sector has been entirely surreal. This frantic panic, taking place predominantly on LinkedIn and Slack groups across Australia, treats our national tax system as a personal grievance.
While these corporate high-flyers are busy crying poor over their exit margins, a survey of our membership revealed 13% of care workers have skipped meals due to a shortage of money. At the same time, over 122,000 Australians are currently homelessness.
If founders and investors are genuinely concerned about losing workers overseas, perhaps they should ask how they can recruit local talent when so many Aussies are doing it so tough?
Sections of the corporate world frequently behave as though they exist in a parallel universe, viewing public infrastructure, healthcare and community support as a magic pudding that gets topped up by everyone but them. They take for granted the very public systems that enable their private wealth and the price we all pay to fund them. They take to the airwaves criticising the government for not having a reform agenda, but the moment the treasurer tries to rebalance the tax system so people with huge investments pay the same tax on gains from their portfolio as salaried professionals do, so-called business “leaders” throw their toys out of the cot.
