The adjective arms race is distorting the tax debate
The tax reform in the budget deserves scrutiny. But it won’t end aspiration, entrepreneurship, equity markets or Australia as we know it.
It’s the death of aspiration. It’s the end of entrepreneurship. It’s the end of equity markets and small-cap investing. It’s the end of growth stocks and a new dawn for yield stocks. It’s the end of the housing supercycle and, to top it all off, the end of Australia as we know it.
That, give or take, is the verdict on the recent proposed capital gains tax changes from those with a platform to deliver one. I find these comments absurd.
There’s certainly some truth in the criticism. But the intensity of the response says less about the substance of the federal budget and more about the broader environment in which it is being interpreted.
We’re operating in an “adjective arms race”, where every policy shift is framed in existential terms. Tax changes aren’t incremental — they are “punitive”. Regulatory tweaks aren’t marginal — they are “crippling”.
