We tested Labor’s CGT plan by its own goals. Here’s the verdict

The government’s tax overhaul promises to level the playing field between wealth and wages. We ran the numbers to find out who actually wins.

The central goal of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ tax changes is simple: raise the tax on capital gains from shares, property and businesses to align them more closely with income tax. It’s Labor’s bid for “generational reform”, aimed at levelling the playing field between capital and labour, asset-rich older generations and younger wage earners locked out of the housing market.

Labor underestimated the backlash, however, as entrepreneurs flooded social media, mocking the prime minister for becoming a “47 per cent shareholder” in their businesses. Most of these memes miss the mark. The tax excludes small businesses turning over less than $2 million – which covers 92 per cent of small businesses in Australia – and the 47 per cent top rate (including Medicare) kicks in only on capital gains above $190,000.

To see if Chalmers’ logic holds water, The Australian Financial Review modelled how investors would fare under the new rules compared to earning the same amount in salary.

The verdict? Chalmers is mostly right. By scrapping the 50 per cent capital gains discount and taxing gains adjusted for inflation instead, the new system brings an investor’s tax bill much closer to a wage earner’s – though it rarely overtakes it.

But there is a big catch. For long-term investors who realise a massive, one-off gain in a single year, the changes overshoot, punishing them with tax rates that can double what an equivalent wage earner pays. The e61 Institute points out an easy fix that the government ignored from the pre-1999 system: income averaging.

For now, the reality of the policy hinges on the two most frustrating words in politics: “it depends.” And that ambiguity is why Chalmers and Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton are finding this budget so hard to sell.

First, should labour and capital be taxed at the same rate?

On budget night, Chalmers framed the changes as “better aligning the taxes paid on capital gains with the taxes paid on wages”. But is this actually a good idea?

Independent economist Saul Eslake calls it a laudable goal. In an ideal tax system, people with similar incomes should make similar contributions to public services such as schools, hospitals, policing and defence.

“The current tax system expects people who earn their income in the form of wages, salaries or interest to contribute more to the cost of providing government services than someone who earns their income in the form of trust distributions, business income and capital gains,” Eslake says.

Yet, many economists also say there should be a discount for income earned from capital gains, for three key reasons.

First, inflation means that some of every capital gain is simply rising prices, which are unfair to tax because it’s not an actual improvement in purchasing power.

Second, investment usually comes from after-tax wage or salary income, which is already taxed, so you’re double taxing.

Third, in a competitive global market for investment, a discount for capital gains helps attract mobile foreign capital, which supports innovation and jobs.

Eslake agrees, but thinks a 50 per cent discount is “way too generous”. Instead, he suggests a $1 million capital gain realised after 10 years should face a tax rate close to – but slightly below – what someone would pay if they earned a $100,000 salary every year for a decade.

With that benchmark in mind, let’s see if Labor’s new system hits the mark.

How do most investments fare under Labor’s changes?

For the majority of investments, Chalmers’ tax changes do level the playing field between the taxation of assets and wages. But the result depends on inflation, the return on your asset and how long you hold it for.

To see how this works in practice, here are six examples comparing investor outcomes under the new rules against identical gains earned as a regular wage over time.

We assume an inflation rate of 2.5 per cent, unless specified otherwise. For each investor, we say how much more tax they pay on the capital gain itself. But the charts show how much tax they will pay on all their total income (including both wages and capital gains) over each period, which gives you a sense of how much worse or better off they are.

1. Property investor
Anvesh earns a salary of $120,000 and buys an investment property for $1 million. It returns 8 per cent a year, and he sells it after 10 years.

On the capital gain specifically, he pays an average tax rate of 35 per cent – higher than the 23 per cent he would have paid under the old rules.

In this case, Labor’s changes do what they say on the tin.

Over 10 years, Anvesh will go from paying 22.2 per cent of his total income in tax (under the current rules) to 27.5 per cent. But had he never bought that property and earned the extra from a second job, he would have paid 29.4 per cent.

There are 2 million property investors in Australia, all with different taxable incomes and rates of return, made in different inflation environments. But for the average one, Labor’s changes will do what they intend.

2. Share investor
Isabella earns $90,000 a year and invests $10,000 in an exchange-traded fund tracking the ASX 200 to help her save for a house deposit. Her investment grows at an annual return of 6 per cent, and she sells after five years.

Under the new rules, Isabella pays $620 in tax on her $3400 capital gain, which is about $110 more than the current system. That amounts to an average tax rate of 19 per cent, compared to 15 per cent currently.

But in the grand scheme of Isabella’s total taxable income over those five years, it’s not a huge tax increase. Over five years of owning her shares and earning her salary, Labor’s changes mean she will pay 19.16 per cent of her total income in tax, up from 19.14 per cent under the old system. And she still pays less than she would if she earned her capital gain as a wage.

How many Australians are there like Isabella? You’ll get different answers depending on who you ask, as Chalmers found out last week. According to the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, about one in 10 people aged between 18 and 34 own shares.

3. Loss-making share investor
Colin earns $70,000 a year, and makes a bad $20,000 investment in the sharemarket, cashing out with just a $2100 capital gain after five years.

Colin will pay $0 in capital gains tax, compared to $310 under the current 50 per cent discount. When inflation is more than half of an investment’s return – which is common in lower-returning investments – the discount under the new system is even larger than 50 per cent.

Because Colin received a return of just 2 per cent a year when inflation was 2.5 per cent, he has made a real (inflation-adjusted) loss. So, there’s no tax to pay on the shares. But like Isabella, it’s not a huge saving in the context of Colin’s total income. Over a five-year period, he still pays about 16 per cent of it in tax.

4. Start-up investor during an inflation crisis
Charlie earns $200,000 a year and invests his $400,000 inheritance into a start-up. His five-year investment returns 7 per cent a year, but there is a long inflation crisis and prices rise at an average rate of 4.5 per cent.

Charlie has still made an inflation-adjusted gain (unlike Colin), but inflation was over half of his investment’s total return. Charlie could reasonably claim that most of the start-up’s growth was simply due to inflation.

That means that he gets a slightly more generous discount compared to the old system. On the capital gain specifically, he pays a tax rate of 18 per cent, compared with 24 per cent under the current rules. He continues to pay a tax rate lower than an equivalent wage earner, as the chart below shows.

When the new rules go too far

5. Start-up founder
Riley launches a start-up with a zero cost base, and sells it 10 years later for a $10 million capital gain. She pays herself a $50,000 salary.

If Riley’s business earns less than $2 million in revenue, depending on whether she meets other conditions, she could be eligible for the existing 50 per cent discount or a complete waiver of any capital gains tax – that’s because the four tax exemptions that currently apply to small business are unchanged by the budget.

But if Riley’s turnover is over $2 million, and she sells after 10 years, she pays a 47 per cent tax rate on the capital gain specifically – which is double what it would have been under the old system.

But here’s the kicker: if Riley instead earns her $10 million capital gain as a wage over time, she will actually pay less tax. Not only is there no discount for her capital gain, her tax rate is higher as a founder.

This is where the 47 per cent meme is correct. Riley’s massive capital gain means most of it is taxed at the top tax rate, which kicks in at $190,000. She also has a zero cost base, meaning there is nothing to index to inflation which could have reduced the rate. If a business owner makes a smaller $500,000 capital gain, they pay an average tax rate of 39 per cent.

It’s worth noting that small business owners also get other tax concessions that support the creation of that capital gain in the first place: refunds for losses in her first two years, the ability to deduct $20,000 worth for assets every year, the option to offset losses from previous year’s taxes, research and development tax incentives and a lower company tax rate of 25 per cent.

Entrepreneurs like Riley make an important contribution to the economy’s productivity and innovation, but they are nonetheless a small portion of the total amount capital gains among investors.

If a business becomes large enough – say Riley held her business for 20 years rather than 10 – then the system goes back to taxing it the same as wages at around 47 per cent, but there’s still no discount.

6. Low-income investor
Alexandra doesn’t earn a wage, but she has some savings and invests $50,000 in the sharemarket. A very astute stockpicker, she bags an annual return of 15 per cent and sells 20 years into her retirement.

Alexandra’s investment is now worth $818,000 after 20 years, and she pays a tax rate of 36 per cent on her capital gain. That’s more than double the old system, and eight times what an equivalent wage earner would pay.

Why such a gap? The government included a surprise 30 per cent minimum tax rate for capital gains. It affects you only if you earn below $45,000, because every dollar above that level is taxed at least 30 per cent already.

Labor included it to catch people who strategically time their capital gain for a year when they’re earning small amounts of income. Alexandra is retired and earns $0 in income, so she is also caught. However, she doesn’t pay exactly 30 per cent due to inflation indexation providing a discount.

How many people could be caught by this?

Tax Office figures show that 5.7 per cent of capital gains were earned by people who earn less than $45,000 in 2022-23. A workaround may exist for these people: shifting all of their investing inside a self-managed super fund, which are unaffected by Labor’s rule changes.

But Eslake says that in these cases, the new system goes too far. You should ideally be able to invest while on a low income outside an SMSF. He agrees with the government’s goal of aligning the taxation of wages and capital gains. “But it’s equally wrong in the other direction,” he says.

Why does this happen, and what’s the solution?

The people who will be overtaxed compared with an equivalent wage earner are those who generate big capital gains over a long period of time and those with other incomes below $45,000. Those who fit the bill are start-up founders and people who invest their money while not working.

This comes back to a problem with capital gains, which is that they are “lumpy”. While wage earners earn their income steadily over time, capital gains are earned in large chunks now and then. They are taxed in one year, even if they reflect years of investing or hard work.

When an investor sells a big investment held for a long time, the sheer size of the capital gain can force them into the highest tax bracket, taxing them at 47 per cent on the majority of the gain.

According to the e61 Institute, there is a simple fix: to couple the indexation system with an income averaging rule, which was a feature of the old pre-1999 capital gains tax system that Chalmers’ system excludes.

How it worked was that you divided your capital gain by five to calculate how much tax you pay, and then you multiply that amount by five at the end. This approximated how much tax you would have paid had you earned the capital gain over time, rather than in one year. It used five years as a simplification.

Income averaging is a system that already exists for farmers and entertainers to avoid big tax bills in bumper years.

Independent economist Chris Richardson thinks adding it to Labor’s new rules for capital gains would be a “reasonable compromise”.

So how would it affect our low-income investor Alexandra?

Introducing the old income averaging rule and scrapping the minimum 30 per cent rate would help her a lot, giving her an average tax rate of 16.9 per cent rather than 35.6 per cent under Labor’s proposed rules. But she would still be paying more than an equivalent wage earner.

What about our start-up founder Riley? She would pay a bit less, but still more than if she earned her capital gain in the form of a salary over time.

The e61 Institute says the government should be exploring whether it is possible, from an administrative perspective, to use how long each investor actually held their investment, rather than using 5 years for everything.

If that was indeed possible, then the gap between a capital gain earner and an equivalent wage earner would vanish entirely, with any difference coming from the inflation indexation discount.

“Ultimately, the purpose of averaging is to make it that individuals are taxed as if the capital gain accrues over time rather than treating it as all having been earned in the year it is sold,” e61 research manager Matt Nolan says.

“It would remove the incentive for strategic timing, and stop people paying higher tax rates than a person with more stable income.”

Nolan says while founders with a zero cost base still wouldn’t get a discount under a perfect income averaging system, any special support they receive can be given outside the income tax system.

“Doing it through a broad capital gains discount just gives additional handouts to others who generate high rates of return,” he says.

Another problem is that the government can tinker with the capital gains tax system, but it is still funnelled through an income tax system that some economists say over-taxes middle and high-income earners. The top bracket kicks in at the lowest inflation-adjusted income level in 20 years.

“In many ways, the debate over capital taxation is really reflecting a view that marginal tax rates are too high and thresholds for the top rates are cutting in too low,” e61 chief executive Michael Brennan says.

Why is this so hard for the government to explain?

As you can see if you’ve got this far, tax is very complicated, and “it depends” is not a good pitch to sell reform.

The slogans that Chalmers wanted to use to sell his fifth budget were “intergenerational equity”, “responsible” and “ambitious”. But “it depends” has quickly crept into the government’s budget lexicon, and arguably does a better job at summing up how it will affect different investors.

The correct answer to every question from taxpayers asking how much more (or less) tax they will pay is: “ask your accountant”.

It’s not a policy that can be readily explained on TikTok or LinkedIn.

Even Chalmers’ rival, shadow treasurer Tim Wilson, admitted as much in his speech to the National Press Club last week, which began with an anecdote about a 12-year-old entrepreneur named Sienna. Wilson said people like Sienna would be hit the hardest by Labor’s tax changes, but when he was asked to be more specific, the first thing he said was: “Well, it depends”.