Posts
1193
Joined
10/15/2021
Location
Brandon, SD
US
What’s going on in Aus? There’s a proposal to tax unrealized gains on superannuation funds with $3 million or more at a rate of 30%. Former state mps, officials, and judges on the old pension system will be exempt. Sounds like a real slippery slope. I don’t give a shit who it is taxing unrealized gains is bananas.
https://www.skynews.com.au/business/financial-commentators-lash-labor-for-targeting-unrealised-capital-gains-in-super-warn-of-potential-extensions-to-other-assets/news-story/05ef5fc57f5c5f8e75ff405023693591?amp&nk=43c0b4e18a38c08d93a58ca2389e8780-1747749531
So typical. Such a crappy country.
@Last2Stroke you want to weigh in?
Not sure if "a killer wombat"'s pretend alter ego is versed in anything Austrailian. He sure is a specialist in American political happenings tho. 🤔
How much is a Wild Dingo puppy going for these days down under?
The Shop
Free shipping: VITALMX
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Taxing unrealized gains is a path for the government to eventually take all your investments. Just a little bit at a time.
For the aussies in here , why do you think albo and labour won by so much ? Was it Dutton was uninspiring ? Or a heap of people voting labour to keep the greens out ? (Which happened here to an extent in 2020 )
Don’t agree with it at 3 million. When we get into the hundreds of millions and billions category then sure I’m good with it. But 3 million nah. Those guys are doing great for themselves but that’s not in the same ballpark as people with billions in stocks that they use to never actually pay taxes.
Taxing unrealized gains is utter nonsense and will never be a thing.
What good will come from taxing them more? Won't they just raise their prices? At that point if the govt can tax those ultra rich what will be stopping them from taxing you more? You just going to tell them no? I guarantee if they pulled this shit in the US someone like Bezos is going to raise prices. There's zero chance he wouldn't. And if that happened no one would be able to do shit about it.
I lived in Australia for a while after college but I don't know enough about Australia – particularly in it's current state – to comment on anything else than what I experienced... which was beautiful women, delicious beer, amazing hikes, killer beaches, the best zoo I've ever visited (you get to chill with kangaroos), and the insane feeling of seeing a wallaby in the wild.
I'd love to take my wife one day but we've got a few other places we want to scratch off the list first.
He might. That would be his decision to make. Then the consumers can decide if they want to spend on their wants from Amazon anymore. The revenue from making sure billionaires don’t pay an effective tax rate of 3% would create an enormous revenue stream to fix so many issues that it would have numerous upsides. The billions in wealth they hoard never actually cycle through our economy. We could put a lot more funding into securing our border, breaking up sex trafficking rings, taking steps to fix our insanely broken healthcare system, etc. That’s all I’m saying. To put in perspective the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire, which is my point here, a million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. They have more wealth than their great x5 grandchildren will ever be able to spend. For people like you and I to pay a higher tax rate than them is absolute insanity.
A couple things that make me think you don't understand how an economy works:
1. Most if not all billionaires don't have a checking or investment account where they hide their billions from us peasants, they have that money tied up in company stock, real estate, etc. In order to tax unrealized gains you would essentially be forcing them to sell off their assets, which in turn hurts everyone. You don't get to that level of wealth by just saving and hording money, you deploy the capital to build businesses that create jobs to employ people and products for people to buy.
2. It would be almost impossible to accurately assess how much of an unrealized capital gain or loss someone has. Do we just pick a random date in the year and file based on that? Do we take an average of their gains/losses over the course of the entire year? The logistics of this make zero sense to anyone with any level of financial background.
3. If you took every penny from every billionaire in the US you would fund the federal government for about 8 months, so good luck doing anything with that.
Nope actually I understand economics just fine. Seems to be you who is confused.
1. They are absolutely hiding their wealth. Nobody can seriously argue otherwise. I mean it’s hiding in plain sight but it’s still hiding it from taxes. They don’t have an actual job like most people in the world. So they avoid those types of taxes. Then they just live off of their wealth they have hidden from taxes by borrowing against it. The bank always accepts. It’s a secure loan. Then they pay the banks a measly % of interest. Way less than they otherwise would with regular taxes. Their money sitting on real estate investments or in the market does nothing for the economy. It’s not cycling through economy the same way it otherwise would.
2. You just tax a certain percentage of any wealth they have over a certain amount. So let’s say that number is 1 billion. Bezos has a net worth of almost 300 billion. So for 299 billion of that he pays 10% in taxes. Maybe raise it a little more as you get into the hundreds of billions. But to keep it simple in this example, his wealth is assessed on January 1 and he has to pay it by the tax filing date of April 15. So here that would mean he has to pay a wealth tax of 29 billion. Estimates for a program that makes sure every child is fed in all US schools would cost roughly 30 billion. So he alone paying a measly 10% could feed every US child in public schools.
3. I am not a socialist and therefore do not support taking every penny from every rich person.
What is he supposed to use to write that $29 billion check with?
Exactly!
Just sell some stock...since that where the unrealized gains are...oh, wait...all the sudden 10% of his Amazon stock hits the market (if he has to pay 10% tax on his stock in the company) to pay his taxes...then stock prices plummet...that hurts the price of stock for every single person who has stock, or a mutual fund, or a 401K or IRA invested in Amazon (to use his example)...then the same thing happens next year, and the year after that, and the year after that...
Taxing unrealized gains is a great way to ruin the economy...and will hurt not just billionaires, but all Americans who have 401K's, IRA's, mutual funds, etc. etc.
I swear liberals think that billionaires are like Uncle Scrouge on Duck Tales (if you remember that cartoon from the 80's/90's), with a massive vault where they "horde" and "hide" all of their money...and they go swimming in it every day, and where they sit and plot and ponder about all the ways they can screw over every day Americans and "take all the wealth" in the country...and that these billionaires can just go into that huge vault and take out however much money the government demands to pay their fantasy taxes...
Good question! A lot would need to be worked out and it would need to be gradually implemented properly. An easy start is that they pay a % of tax on all unrealized gains over a certain amount. So if your assets increase from 5 billion to 10 billion, you are taxed on 5 billion of that at 10% for a tax burden of 500 million. How do they pay it? One way is to close the loophole of taking out loans against your assets. Force them to actually sell the stock and then tax that gain then. That way billionaires can’t just hide their wealth and pay an effective tax rate of 3% while the rest of us are somewhere between 20-35%. The second way is to tax it when the wealth is transferred. When someone passes away and the wealth is passed down to their children, there’s a tax on that. Again only on wealth over a billion. The third is a bit more complex and would involve audits to see what other types of taxes they pay and what they’d need to be raised to. The fourth is essentially the forced reinvestment into the economy. So for instance instead of Bezos keeping his 300 billion in wealth and never paying taxes on it, he’s forced to put 30 billion (10%) back into the economy in some way in the next fiscal year.
I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying that it’s absurd we say well that seems complex how would we do it?! Nah better to just continue down the path we are where the top fraction of 1% hold more power than they have in over 100 years. They control the entire ecosystem we live in. I personally don’t want to live in an oligarchy. Do you?
Sounds like Minority Report - arrested for a crime you haven’t committed yet.
Bernie Sanders really?!
Pit Row
ThatOneMXGuy's tax plan:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9IpmODBfRz0?feature=share
You got that right, with the just past election the so called opposition was just a light version of the incumbent government (labor)<<<<<< notice there is no u in their spelling?
Overall labor did not get that many first preference votes compared to the main opposition which is called liberals here in the land of Oz (supposed conservative party) Buuuut since we have preferential voting what the liberals did was preference labor above the greens which in turn caused the greens to lose 3 seats and labor to pick up quite a few new ones.
Party Results from the 2025 Federal Election - ABC News
Both of the main parties just rammed through the misinformation/disinformation bill just before the election and both parties were in agreeance with the so called net zero by 2050 bullshit............just like what is happening across the western world they are trying to gut the middle class as the middle class voters are the ones who change governments and this unrealized gains tax is a way to break the middle class, funny thing is and you could not guess who is exempt from it...................politician's............you cant make that up eh?
Albanese government reveals that politicians will be exempt from new superannuation tax - Hellocare
If democrats in the USA could they would tax unrealized gains on anyone with $500 in a PayPal account. And exempt all their billionaire buddy’s who fund their campaigns..
I’m not real bright but isn’t there already an inheritance tax? I don’t care for your use of the word force lol. If we’re all truly sick of the bullshit and we are the ones paying too much tax wouldn’t it be easier for us the stand up and say “fuck you govt we're done playing this game” instead of demanding the govt make MORE laws and force(your word) our fellow citizens to be ultra transparent and give the govt the money? For fuck sakes dude. You know damn well the govt isn’t going to put that money to good use. I know you hate the whole Doge situation but it’s pretty clear that the govt are absolutely undefeated in fucking away our money. But you, like hjacksplumber dude said I’m just a vehicle repair man. What do I know?
If you tax unrealized gains at 10% annually as suggested above, but they only earned the historical average 7%, they would actually be 3% in the hole every year so eventually they would be taxed into having nothing. Am I missing something, or is that basically just theft?
Albo didn't win, Dutton lost!
In the 2022 election there was significant push back against the ruling Liberal/National coalition, their were a number of reasons for that...
- Female voters deserted the Liberal party, due to Morrison's coverup of an alleged rape in his office, and females within parliament complaining about a hostile environment, Most of those voters shifted their support to independent Teal candidates.
- During Covid Morrison wouldn't provide federal funds to Victoria, who's state government was Labor, but did provide federal funding to NSW who's state government was Liberal. Victorian voters voted out most Liberal candidates, including Frydenberg who was the Liberal's deputy leader.
- Western Australia voted out many Liberal candidates for similar reasons to Victoria.
Leading up to the 2025 election, Dutton committed to...
- Eliminating work from home arrangements, significant backlash from female voters cause him to rescind commitment.
- Build 7 nuclear power plants within 10 years to replace coal fired power plants, but did not provide costs. CSIRO's reports said it would take >20 years and electricity costs would be 4 times higher.
Trump may have had a effect, pushing Australian voter further left.
The Liberals have now appointed a female leader, to try and salvage the female vote, and have separated from the National party who were the ones pushing nuclear power.
Son of a bitch. That damned Trump meddling in Aus elections. He’s to blame for every problem! I wonder when there will be a new Scooby Doo episode…
Keeping with the Bezos example, why do you think the government is more entitled to his money than he is?
The media has raised concerns about taxing unrealized gains, this is not new, unrealized Australian Superannuation gains have always been taxed.
Have a read of the proposed amendment...
https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-09/c2023-443986-em.pdf
It proposes increasing the tax rate on Australian Superannuation gains on accounts worth more the $3 million...
The 30% is not applied to all gains, it is in proportion to the balance above $3 million. If somebody has a superannuation balance of $6 million, half the gains are taxed at 15%, half the gains are taxed at 30%. If somebody has a superannuation balance of $30 million, 10% of gains are taxed at 15%, 90% of gains are taxed at 30%.
Losses can be carried forward and subtracted from gains in future years.
Australian Superannuation is different from personal investments, there are significant tax concessions, contributions are taxed at 15%, and gains are taxed at 15 or 30%, instead of peoples nominal 19-45% tax rate.
Employers are required to contribute 11% of employees wages and salary into the employees superannuation fund, the superannuation funds are not controlled by the employer, they are independent, employees can switch between superannuation funds any time. The government has a website that shows each superannuation funds fees and returns, this has weeded out poor performing superannuation funds.
There are no taxes and no talk of taxes on unrealized gains on personal investments.
I think Dutton would have lost even without Trump.
Voting is compulsory in Australia, both side have to win voters in the center to win, alienating the female vote won't get you there, it's lost the Liberals 2 elections in a row.
Very few states have an inheritance tax. And none of them apply to any stocks. So a billionaire can just borrow against his stocks his entire life. Pass those down to his kids when he passes. The cycle repeats. Stock values continue growing at a rate in one year most never make in a lifetime. Quite literally never pay taxes on it and continuously borrow against it. That’s how they pay an effective tax rate of 3% while you and I are from 25-35% depending on overall income. Again I always like to reiterate here I’m not talking about millionaires. The ones who have tens or even hundreds of billions is who I’m referring to.
The days of potentially rising up against the government are long gone. Have been since the early 1900s but especially since the 1940s with the military air superiority they’d have on us and even more so in recent times with drones.
Well to be fair DOGE has been a complete joke and failure lol. But yes I agree government has failed us often. But they’ve also been a change for good often. During progressive eras of this country, groups of people have gotten the right to vote, workers have gotten protections from big business, at risk people have gotten access to healthcare, etc. etc. If the right people are in there, they can do good things. The same people coming in there and screwing over people are the same ones saying government doesn’t work, thereby themselves creating the self fulfilling prophecy. I mean look at all those states who are very much governing in that mindset. Crime is super high. Life expectancy super low. They are welfare states meaning they take in more from the federal government than they give to it. Etc. Check out all the states in the southeast in a nationwide life expectancy map or poverty map to see what I mean. In the early 80s we were all sold the idea that giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals would trickle down to us. It was one of the biggest lies sold and people still buy it to this day. Just look at the shrinking middle class and it can all be traced back to the early 80s where the top tax rate was slashed and businesses became less regulated.
And just so everyone knows, I’d probably agree with people on this board more than they’d ever care to know. My main issue with one party right now is they’ve allowed the extremes to take over. The Democratic Party, for all their faults and how incompetent they are, have not allowed the likes of Rashida Tlaib, to give an example, to take over. They are an extreme minority in the party and have no power. The moderates hold the power, overwhelmingly. On the other side, any Republican saying Biden won the 2020 election is immediately primaried even if they agree with Trump on every policy. That’s why Romney and Cheney and Pence have no voice anymore.
It’s not about “entitlement”. It’s creating a more progressive tax system so we don’t end up in the Second Gilded Age, which many historians and economists argue we are already in. It gives the middle class more of a chance and keeps the billionaires from holding all the political and economic power in the country. And again, hundreds of billions in wealth. He wouldn’t even notice having that taxed, and it could feed multiple starving children. And I’d argue society is much better when children aren’t starving.
Post a reply to: Australia taxing unrealized gains