According to the real estate industry, Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax policy favours high income families and does nothing to curb what it sees as the excesses.
“The proposal is that losses from new investments in shares and existing properties can still be used to offset investment income tax liabilities and that these losses can also continue to be carried forward to offset the final capital gain on the investment”, explained Mr Sanders, President of the Real Estate of Australia.
“The irony is that this policy actually favours the wealthy, who will have other investment income to offset against negative gearing losses. While nurses, school teachers, electricians and office managers who make up over half of the top 10 occupations using negative gearing will generally only have salary and wages income and thus not be able to offset the losses.”
“It proposes to slug the mum and dad investors with one property saving for their retirement whilst the wealthy with a large and diversified portfolio will remain unaffected.”
