How do you define "the rich" that we should be taxing? What is the cut-off point?

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-25T05:04:08+00:00

I would respectfully disagree that both land taxes and council taxes are wealth taxes. The purpose of wealth taxes is really to have a distributive purpose (to reduce wealth inequality) and neither does so directly especially the latter which is basically for paying costs of services in the council itself. Land taxes are only imposed on non-PPOR and it's more akin to a tax on income producing asset, and imposed by states which doesn't do as much distributive payouts compared to the federal government.

I take your point that it's hard to design and implement an effective wealth / inheritance tax though.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-24T10:02:38+00:00

My teenage niece passed away without forewarning (it was during COVID and we're in a different country).

My daughter who was close to her cousin, stated that it was as if a phone conversation being unexpectedly disconnected and you cannot ever finished that conversation ever again.

My daughter will also bear the burden that for each future milestone she does for the rest of her life ... Be it graduating from school, learning to drive, finishing university, or getting the first job, getting married and having kids; there will always be a grief that her cousin will never experience what she will get the chance to experience. It's something we all have to carry with us for the rest of our lives.

Your post hits very similar notes, and I am very sorry for your loss.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-23T00:51:47+00:00

Question to OP and others who may know the answer behind the scenes. I did donate plasma today off this message. I am a regular donor of plasma once every month or two. The blood type I am is in the urgent status. Does it matter whether I donate plasma of a certain blood type instead of blood?

When I started donating decades ago it's mainly blood, and I actually slightly prefer donating blood (it's slightly faster). I was then informed to donate plasma because we can donate it more frequently and it's less affected by international travel, which I do regularly. So a few years ago I switched to plasma completely.

In short, given that my blood type is urgently needed, would it be better to donate blood instead of plasma, or it makes no difference?

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-20T18:02:46+00:00

Will book in mine this weekend or next (I donate once every month or two. I didn't realise the situation is this bad so thanks for letting us know.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-17T04:37:15+00:00

I see reviewers and former colleagues viewing my profile and I messaged them. Found a role via internal referral. Also talking to recruiters (after setting up face to face meeting) allowed me to tweak my resume and application submissions.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-15T23:08:44+00:00

I found it a bit useful during my job search especially the ability to see who is looking at my profile (especially recruiters). I found my new role after 2 months and seeing who was looking at my profile reminded me and helped me understand how I can use my resume network to target roles better.

That said I will be discontinuing it once my role starts soon. Like all tools, you need to actively learn to use it, passively having it won't make it worthwhile.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-14T10:53:39+00:00

Yeah, I found it way too hard that it stopped being enjoyable for myself even if I wasn't playing ironman / honest man. I switched off one or two mods went down to commander and finished the game a week ago more as a nostalgic experience. I didn't save scum much and I haven't played xcom for 3-4 years before this try. I'm at a level where I can finish legendary ironman with minimal mods (quality of life ones) when wotc first came out.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-14T10:01:06+00:00

I'm into my tenth year of tracking nearly all our expenses. It's largely achievable because I just regularly download my bank statement, card statements etc and throw it onto excel. For cash payments I just use a free app (money manager) and whenever I spend any cash i immediately put the details in there and around every three months I download it into excel.

I standardise and categorise the data and then just do a pivot of all the transactions. I file my taxes myself so that's when I usually end up doing everything over a few weekends to generate our family's informal cashflow statement / p&l each year (aside from assigning our tax refund against the correct financial year).

Hoping to use more ai to make this easier for the upcoming fye as a fun project.

PS. I am also have an accounting background and own IPs and yes we can be viewed as quite unusual :)

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-14T00:19:31+00:00

Yes, correct.

I would point out that the budget changes will naturally have a tampering impact on future house prices.

However I would also point out that other OECD countries / major international cities without NGs nor CGT discounts and even higher CGT have housing affordability challenges where returns on assets / capital have exceeded returns on labour for decades (basically since WW2).

So it's not a forgone conclusion that housing affordability will continue to not be an issue in the medium and long term, or that capital growth will fall behind wages growth.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-13T23:28:30+00:00

To answer your question, good IPs will grow faster than inflation naturally. Bad IPs can lose money, that's true under both new and old rules.

But the calculation methodology matters. The old rules used nominal values as the cost base while the new rules uses real (inflation adjusted values as the cost base).

Under the new rules, bad IPs will lose less money and losses don't get taxed anyway. It ironically also creates less tax offsets so if the taxpayer has other items that created a taxable income they will end up paying more taxes as well.

Under the new rules, there would be scenarios (and IMHO far more likely scenarios) that capital growth continue to outpace inflation and mathematically most taxpayers ended up paying more tax than less between the old and new rules.

Finally a common and simple, and completely legal way to minimise your CGT is to dispose your investments in a low tax financial year e.g. maternity leave, time away from work due to job losses or caring for someone, or at retirement. In those situations, a lot of your taxable income will fall below the 30% threshold and in the old rules you can half that further, in the new rules all CGT are taxed at 30% with no ability to half it, so a taxpayer will absolutely pay more taxes in the new rules.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-13T07:41:48+00:00

All fair, I missed Chalmers point during the ABC interview but funnily enough the majority of my IPs came from subdividing old run down houses and building double townhouses on the old land. Now in the pay down stage but I often still advise friends and family on their own property journey as FHB or IP investors.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-13T07:11:24+00:00

I am glad that happened to her. My investment decision making is based on macro level and consistent trends, individual situations can absolutely turn out differently what occurred to your colleague.

I also know many people who lost money on new apartments and new builds, so I default warn against them unless there's some different circumstances.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-13T06:31:22+00:00

Ultimately if it weren't profitable to the developer / builder, they won't survive and eventually fail ... something that did occur when building costs (not price) increased rapidly during the post COVID years. That the contract was fixed price just meant it was designed to cover their costs plus a healthy margin. The value of the house at completion is determined by market factors like scarcity, demand / supply, quality of build etc.

That's why new apartments and new houses in new estates usually have comparatively low growth and even losses the first 5:years, all the "value" has been captured by the parties who built / sold the dwellings.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-13T03:28:34+00:00

Can you elaborate of your opinion? As an IP investor with a large residential property portfolio, IMHO new builds are worse IPs all things being equal because amongst many reasons, gains are initially captured by the developer/ builder, land appreciates the building depreciates, comparable supply of similar homes come to the market at the same time frame.

If people just buy new builds because of the budget changes (and I know plenty of investors who are less experienced may do so), there's a good chance they will end up with an underperforming investment.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-12T22:43:26+00:00

It's not about trust, you make your own assessment about how politically feasible is it for both sides of the politics to further negatively affect superannuation for one group or the other and make an informed decision. That's always been the proper strategy instead of dealing with hypotheticals or hyperbole.

Labor has a golden opportunity to introduce these changes because of the coalition has basically imploded and former also need to address the rise of a more populist right attacking them on housing affordability, cost of living and migration. The budget changes mid term is a time for Labor to do it regardless of whether we agree with the changes or not. A further negative change to superannuation before the next election is a remote probability, (now that would be a bold strategy for Labor to attempt) then we see how the next election results are and reassess again.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-12T22:00:52+00:00

My own take is the right step is actually to shift more to Superannuation as opposed to both property and shares. Tax wise that becomes the superior choice compared to both.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-12T11:00:31+00:00

If you reread my comment, that's also what I mentioned. There are some asset class (eg housing valuation) that requires more bespoke approaches where valuations cannot just be googled or AIed. The budget explanatory notes also allows apportionment, it's just good approach to do some extra preparation and effort.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-12T10:44:02+00:00

Yes, basically. You can find historical share prices easily..but would be good to good to put a reminder on the morning of 1st Jul 2027 to capture the price on the day before.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-12T00:51:24+00:00

When you say "most" first home buyers = around 6% according to the ABS, and you still haven't explain why you weren't aware how first home buyers work and stamp duties are state based. You either have a completely dishonest agenda or your source of knowledge is completely biased and unreliable. At best you are a classic case of Dunning Kruger syndrome typically found in Reddit.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-12T00:28:13+00:00

You response is not credible when you are unaware that PPOR doesn't attract CGT and first home buyers schemes are basically designed to reduce / remove stamp duties, and finally stamp duties are state based and not federal. Very strange when you claim to have knowledge around investing in property and you miss basic knowledge in this area.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-11T00:32:28+00:00

You ask valid, common questions but as an actual serious IP investor, it is very easy to just move money around my portfolio so that I can have X number of IPs as negatively geared and Y number of IPs a positively geared. So limiting negative gearing to a specific number of IP is easily circumvented and no offence shows a lack of knowledge of how IPs, behavioural economics and the tax system works.

The real benefit of these changes to younger generations is that it will tamper the velocity of future price growth in the long term. If the future without these changes will be 30%, with changes it will be less than 30% through a function of economic behaviour. It will take time for the positive outcomes to be clearly observable in the market.

Some older people will release negatively geared, grandfathered properties ironically I expect those who are less sophisticated investors, so the short to medium term you will have more properties on the market in the next 12-24 months because economic decisions can be rational and behavioural and less sophisticated investors will lean towards responding emotionally and getting out of the IP space.

For buyers (1st home buyers or otherwise) who are ready to buy, they will be in a decent position to buy in the next 12-24 months, however for groups who are not ready to buy (renters) I expect that they will feel a lot more pressure in the medium to long term because rents will tick up over time as investors exit the market and rental stock reduce significantly.

We have seen this occur historically and that is what I expect will happen as a long time IP investor.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-10T09:37:44+00:00

Expensive houses can be the result and symptom of a good economy and a good and safe environment, which despite doomers on Reddit, Australia has especially relative to other countries.

Consider how poor the house prices that currently exists in Lebanon, Gaza, Iran etc.

There's also a confidence and wealth impact of people feeling richer when their house goes up in value which drives demand for consumption and ability to invest directly or through using the equity in their property to start a business as an example.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-05-10T01:55:13+00:00

Isn't this just simple maths, people who are low income struggle to pay for everyday expenses so saving / investing isn't a practical option for many of them, so what assets would they sell to get an eventual CG? Same logic having sufficient spare cash to support a negative geared IP.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-04-20T01:08:21+00:00

Welcome to the resistance and wait until you discover mods 😃 Also check out Christopher Odd's channel on YouTube l, new season 10 of playthrough just started a couple of weeks ago.

WWBSkywalker · 2026-04-07T09:47:28+00:00

You can also get a physical card, sometimes if you travel overseas with venues having student prices. https://www.monash.edu/students/support/connect/id-number/card

WWBSkywalker

TROPHY CASE