WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT
A local wealth generator from our town’s very foliage dense Betoota Grove has today hit out at ‘all the nonsense about negative gearing’ and the like.
Property taxation issues like negative gearing and Capital Gains Tax (CGT) concessions have popped up in the news cycle again, after revelations they’ll cost 39 billion this financial year, and well over 150 billion in the next decade if things continue on the way they are.
While many talk about mum and dad investors, the majority of the dollars from the concessions flow to the top 10-20% of earners in society – at a time when the bottom 0-50% of the country struggle to put food on the table or a roof over their head.
Negative gearing is the mechanism that allows people who own a property to claim their losses (eg interest, maintenance, sale costs, legal fees etc) against their income.
Capital Gains Concessions allow people to write off 50% of their profits if they own the property for more than 12 months, or not pay CGT if they ‘live in the property for 6 months.’
Many investors of course claim the losses from an investment property before ‘living in it’ for 6 months and not paying CGT on the sale of the property.
Speaking to The Advocate from the comfort of the recently renovated principal place of residence he moved into 6 months ago but hasn’t actually spent a night in, Grahame Rogers explained why negative gearing and CGT concessions are actually a great thing for everyone.
“It’s simple economics mate,” explained Rogers about the simple economic fact that $39 billion a year gets taken away from the entire cohort of taxpayers and given pretty much mostly to the wealthiest few taxpayers to subsidise their investments.
“Without property investors like myself and Carol, this nation would be in the midst of an even worse housing crisis,” said the man who lives in a country where there are 1 million vacant homes at any given point – because people couldn’t be bothered or don’t need to rent them out.
“Negative gearing and CGT Concessions allow people like ourselves to put our hard earned into creating places for people to live.”
While Rogers hasn’t built a single property of the 6 he owns and the 4 he’s sold, he says if you take away these incentives, we will continue to fail to meet the demands of supply.
“By allowing people to trade houses that should be homes for people in an ever spiralling housing bubble that creates absurdly inflated wealth for people who actually create zero value for society as a whole, you encourage more properties to be bought and traded by people like myself.”
“Scrapping these concessions is just not good for the economy,” said the man who by economy, means people like him.
More to come.
