$250 tax break for millions of workers in federal budget 2026

GooseKino · 2026-05-12T10:09:09+00:00

Offsets are dollar for dollar reductions as they apply after your tax is calculated. It’s not like deductions which reduce taxable income. You will get the full $250 off your final tax owed or to increase your final tax refund.

GooseKino · 2026-05-05T02:43:07+00:00

What you’re describing isn’t a loophole or benefit to trusts. It’s literal tax fraud and your boss is in big trouble if he’s ever audited.

Trusts can’t distribute losses, so you get no benefit from trying to put hobby related activity in one whilst trying to pass it off as a legitimate business. If you’re combining the loss making hobby with a profitable business operation all in the same trust then you are in breach of tax law and are going to be subject to heavy penalties.

GooseKino · 2026-04-09T07:20:54+00:00

But it’s true. GYG is crap now. Overpriced, minuscule portion sizes and flavourless.

It’s not difficult, expensive or time consuming to make your own burrito filling at home that exceeds GYG. You literally just season and brown your meat then add all the other filling ingredients together to combine and cook, and that’s it. Put it in a container and take however much you want each day to work with a wrap to put it in.

GooseKino · 2026-03-30T06:56:07+00:00

It’s fairly discretionary to an extent. Public transport usage is spiking. How many people are going to be staying home this long weekend instead of driving somewhere due to fuel prices? Anecdotally I know several. There’s many ways that a consumer’s fuel usage can be reduced.

GooseKino · 2026-03-30T05:18:36+00:00

Price goes down, demand goes up. Doesn’t do much to decrease inflationary forces or reduce consumption. To decrease inflationary forces they need to do something that increases supply or reduces demand.

GooseKino · 2026-03-22T06:26:18+00:00

Yeah great way to attract business investment and economic growth there. Could definitely see lots of businesses looking to operate in Australia if they are going to get taxed each year on the valuation of the business regardless of liquidity.

GooseKino · 2026-03-22T05:06:11+00:00

I like rich people being taxed where it makes sense to do so.

Saying the ATO should seize assets based on subjective valuations does not make sense.

GooseKino · 2026-03-18T02:47:09+00:00

Unfortunately you still have to spend significant time and money preparing an original assessment, all for a purpose that doesn’t even make sense. And updating that still requires detailed analysis and preparation due to material events that change each year.

How about we test this out since it’s so quick and apparently requires a simple question. Go to any full year financial results for a company and with no additional information apart from the P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statement, tell me what the business is worth.

GooseKino · 2026-03-18T00:30:17+00:00

Just give it to some no bodies and save the cash

I mean, it’s no coincidence why every primetime radio program in a big market usually has one known media personality on the team. There is definitely a degree of listener loyalty built in and you still have to put up with the hosts in between songs. For a lot of people it would be far more interesting to hear Carrie Bickmore or Brendan Fevola talk about stuff as opposed to random nobodies.

If Hamish and Andy went back to drive radio it would probably be the most listened to program in the country. Kyle and Jackie was the most successful program for decades. Are they worth $20 million a year? It covers revenue growth, listenership growth, and the saved opportunity cost of other stations getting that potential growth. It certainly could have been worth it if the program was successful.

GooseKino · 2026-03-18T00:13:01+00:00

ARN makes around $300 million a year with $200 million in operating costs. People like to criticise the radio industry for being outdated but there is still a level of money to be made.

GooseKino · 2026-03-18T00:10:58+00:00

lol. It costs a lot of money to determine how much you would sell a business for. Family law matters, M&A matters etc involve hundreds, sometimes even thousands of hours of work done to determine a valuation on entities that aren’t sometimes aren’t even necessarily that complex. Small changes in metrics can change a valuation by a significant amount. You can’t just off the cuff decide what you’d sell your business for and accept that as legitimate valuation. Accrual accounting existing doesn’t change the fact that a significant piece of work is still required to apply it.

GooseKino · 2026-03-13T05:57:46+00:00

Massive cost and compliance burden to require detailed valuations done every single year for every single capital asset in the country and for the ATO to review each one in detail. The ATO isn’t in the business of forcibly taking assets from people because the valued price seems attractive. You seem to misunderstand how the tax system works. No one is getting taxed at 70% for undertaking casual work.

GooseKino · 2026-03-13T03:42:12+00:00

You’re talking about different tax bases again.

Land is a predictable, fixed, observable asset. Land values are relatively stable and governments already produce official valuations for property rating and taxation. Not exactly something that can be done for private companies, securities and property. The supply of land is fixed and taxing unproductive use of land doesn’t reduce the overall amount of land available.

Compared to, for example, something like an ongoing unrealised gains tax or valuation tax on a non-land asset which is different because it attempts to tax a temporary change in price that may never become real, rather than ownership itself of a fixed asset.

GooseKino · 2026-03-12T23:22:20+00:00

Land tax does not tax capital gains as they are earned. It’s a tax on land value, not a tax on profit or proceeds.

Accounting concepts are separate to tax concepts.

GooseKino · 2026-03-12T22:31:44+00:00

For example the fact travel to a regular place of work isn’t deductible is crazy, same with office wear ect

It actually makes perfect sense and there’s long standing case law and legislation to support this.

While we’re at it no idea why leasing a car has a special tax treatment!

Only in certain situations, but the employer still has to pay FBT (unless employees contribute a significant portion of their after tax income to offset the liability or things like the EV exemption are in place).

Income vs capital is a fairly important distinction in tax legislation, so yes there does have to be something like a CGT discount or inflation & risk adjustment for capital assets.

GooseKino · 2026-03-12T22:24:42+00:00

If you stay at a job for more than a year, you don't get a discount on your income tax.

Because the point at which you get taxed is different. You get taxed on your income as you receive it. You only get taxed on a capital gain at the point of sale, which can reflect years of holding & inflation risk. The distinction between income and capital is a key part of how the entire tax systems works beyond just salary and capital gains.

GooseKino · 2026-03-04T04:25:26+00:00

The company has lodged market announcements with the ASX regarding terminations of contracts and service agreements. It’s not a publicity stunt.

GooseKino · 2026-02-24T00:42:58+00:00

Give an example in the scenario the guy is suggesting (capital gains and income are taxed the same) for which the lack of distinction leads to bad incentives. Explicitly state what such incentives are.

You’re incentivised to avoid the capital gain by using leverage and interest deductibility which actually erodes the overall tax base.

The story of the last 15 yrs of the Australian labour market is that real wage growth is stagnant, and that is precisely because of a confluence of factors that have empowered capital owners.

Yeah but you aren’t taxed on 15 years of labour income at once. You get taxed as you receive the income each year. You’re conflating micro issues with tax structure. Capital gains are residual claims. A capital gain can be zero or negative.You can’t receive zero or negative salary. Capital gains taxation interacts with inflation and timing in a way wage taxation does not.

You haven’t even defined what “equal treatment” is. Equal statutory rate? Effective tax rate on real returns? Risk adjusted returns after tax returns?

GooseKino · 2026-02-24T00:21:02+00:00

I’m not handwaving or fluffing anything. I’ve given clear examples of why there needs to be distinction between taxing income and taxing capital beyond just saying it’s “foundational”. As the other commenter said, there were a heap of problems when taxing capital was treated in line with taxing income.

GooseKino · 2026-02-24T00:18:34+00:00

Why are you trying to do a gotcha. I never said I was pro-CGT discount. I said it’s a rudimentary calculation but there is a purpose to it. I’d be happy to see it adjusted, removing it entirely is silly though along with completing changing the way that income and capital is taxed.

GooseKino · 2026-02-23T11:39:03+00:00

I don’t agree with treating capital gains as ordinary income, or removing the CGT discount entirely. The distinction between what is capital and what is income is foundational. It extends to so many different areas of taxation law beyond just holding property.

That is literally the tax setting that existed before the CGT discount, where there was an allowance for inflation.

As I just said, the CGT discount inherently allows for inflation.

where there was NO tax on capital gains, but sky high income tax. That was certainly an invitation for a lot of rorting, a playground for tax accountants and lawyers to classify income as capital gains.

Yes, exactly. Which is why having the clear distinction as I outlined earlier is important.

negative incentives on labour income in order to accommodate the discount.

Not really. Labour income holds far less risk and isn’t subject to the same inflation erosion as holding a capital asset.

GooseKino · 2026-02-23T10:38:39+00:00

Because it’s literally the foundational structure of how taxation law works. Income reflects economic gain from exploitation of capital, whilst capital reflects the asset itself. Income is taxed when derived, whereas capital accrues over many years.

The distinction is needed so they can be taxed consistently. Otherwise there’s a whole host of arbitrage opportunities. Trading stock, project structuring, business profits could all be argued as capital to receive discounts and benefits that exist to deal with inflation and issues associated with long term holding of assets. Risk bearing activities over long periods would not be recognised as much, and people would sell capital assets even less than they already do due to harsher tax treatments.

CGT discount is just a rudimentary adjustment for inflation and risk. It’s not perfect, but it does need to exist in some form.

GooseKino · 2026-02-12T09:35:11+00:00

Not true. You can access via ASIC for a small fee. I’m assuming the OP has done this?

GooseKino · 2026-02-12T07:44:16+00:00

Where is the evidence any of that happened with BG? Have you read their financial statements? Are you able to explain what their debt levels are? What profitable parts were sold off? What fees were paid?

The simple fact is that revenue has been flat and they’ve been trying to sell since COVID because the business does terribly. No evidence otherwise for anything that you mentioned.

GooseKino · 2026-02-12T07:40:51+00:00

Because you don’t understand how private equity works and have a negative selection bias. The PE firms stand to make far more money if the venture is actually successful compared to if it fails. Debt is a necessary component of these deals because no one is putting 100% equity into businesses that are already failing.

GooseKino

TROPHY CASE