Back at the Revenue Summit we are hearing from a panel about ways to fix Australia’s housing policy.
In Australia we are seeing rising rents, declining home ownership and policies that favour cashed-up investors.
Josie Lee from Oxfam Australia argues Australia’s tax system is “fueling inequality”.
“We are seeing a system in Australia that is failing to tax wealth,” said Ms Lee.
“Negative gearing and the capital gains tax… has been driving up housing prices.
“If we really want to tackle the problem, scrapping the capital gains tax is a winner”.
Maiy Azize from Everybody’s Home says incresaed revenue would allow the government to make a huge investment in public and community housing.
“The government is taking a lot of action – the wrong type of action,” she said.
Advocate Jordan van den Lamb, also known as ‘Purple Pingers’, highlighted housing inaccessibility and the large number of long-term vacant properties that remain unoccupied amid our national housing crisis.
He said politicians are scared to lose votes and that’s why they are not doing anything to fix housing.
“Meanwhile, people are dying,” he said.
1 Comment
I see taxation on long term unoccupied properties as an ideal way of raising revenue for new public/affordable housing, and at the same time potentially making more properties available for rent or for sale. There is really no down-side to this strategy and determining whether properties are occupied is relatively simple given existing and emerging technology. Whilst worthy of serious consideration, modelling shows that winding back tax benefits for investment properties may have the negative effect of reducing the number of rentals available without necessarily increasing the number of properties for sale. More housing supply is key and we can't build quickly enough, so taxing vacant properties heavily may be a good way to use existing housing to boost supply. Densification via 'blue fields' development should also be encouraged but it won't make as much difference as is required.