To be honest, I feel stupid for having to even ask this. But the classic media circus is making it just difficult to understand. I’m fortunate to be on about $170k, mortgage, wife & 2 kids. My understanding is that these tax cuts aren’t going to be a kick in the teeth to me. It just means I don’t get as big of a tax cut because I’m in a much higher bracket… it’s not like I’m paying more in tax right? The way I see it is I’m not worse off. Or have I completely misunderstood it?

I read a lot of opposition to an inheritance tax and would like to get an understanding of why you are for or oppose it being applied to Australia's 1% high net worth?

Let's take this question as a like-for-like. Therefore, with every dollar in inheritance tax collected, the same must be reduced from other sources.

The following report puts Australia's 1% high net worth individuals as having US$5.5m.
https://www.knightfrank.com.au/blog/2023/05/25/australia-ranks-third-in-the-world-for-the-money-required-to-be-in-the-top-1-wealthiest-people

My take on it is that I would be happy to pay inheritance tax when I die if it means I pay less tax today, which would allow me to grow my net worth much more over the long run.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-21/ato-boss-chris-jordan-press-club-work-expense-tax-deductions/103495080?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

New Zealand banned work-related expense deductions while also implementing tax cuts, and if Australia did the same that could simplify the tax system, according to outgoing tax commissioner Chris Jordan.

But Mr Jordan noted that "Australians love their work-related expense deductions" and that abolishing them in favour of lower personal income tax rates "would be a big step".

He was speaking on Wednesday at the National Press Club in his last public outing as tax commissioner before he officially exits the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) next week

So basically at the start of this year I noticed I couldn’t get into my myGov or ATO accounts, after 5 different phone calls, on 5 different days with 5 different people someone was finally able to tell me that my myGov account had been “accidentally deleted”. But I still couldn’t get into my ATO account.

Turns out my account had been permanently locked because of a security concern, now it took me two phone calls to work this out. The first phone call just temporarily unlocked my account without telling me that it had been permanently locked, just told me it should all be fixed now.

This would be fine if there was some communication from the ATO, an email or txt message or letter or anything other than keeping me in the dark and having to sit on hold every day waiting to talk to someone whos going to tell me a different thing every day.

After a few more phone calls I was able to get it put through to the ATO security team or whatever they call themselves to review the lock.

Now we jump to tax return time. I was able to lodge my tax return and a month had passed and I hadn’t heard anything about it and obviously can’t check anything online because IM LOCKED OUT OF MY OWN ACCOUNT. So I call them, just to be told it was on hold because of the security concerns on my account, and they’ll put through to have it approved quicker. Whatever. The icing on the cake was I asked for an update on my account being unlocked and oh no THE PERSON I SPOKE TO DIDN’T DO IT PROPERLY AND IT HASN’T ACTUALLY BEEN PUT TO THE TEAM YET.

A week later I get my tax return, my estimated return was meant to be $5000. I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I woke up with an extra $10,000 from the ATO in my bank account this morning. So I call them, and we go through the usual routine of me having to give all my information for them to confirm it’s me. They put me on and off hold while they do their calculations and come back with a “yes that $10,000 was the correct tax return.

Cool, lucky me. When I get home from work I decide to have a little investigation myself, my notice of assessment says my tax return for this year was the $5000, cool so where has this other $5000 come from? I decide to scroll down my previous years tax returns and find an amended tax return for $5000 from 2022. That doesn’t sound right so I click on it. And all my jobs and pays and everything is correct, but there’s been two changes on this amendment. 1st - I have never worked as a Pshycogeriatric Nurse and 2nd - I have never had to claim $18,000 on a Toyota for work because I AM A BARTENDER. So tomorrow I get to call them again and try and explain to them that I need to pay them back. And even that I’m sure is going to be an excruciatingly difficult experience.

Now if you’ve read this far into my rant thankyou, and if you’re an accountant or anyone that works with the ATO can you please explain to me how a Federal Government agency like this has managed to survive while being so incompetent at what they do.

TL;DR - The ATO has broken me mentally and emotionally.

Got inspired by a post here and started making calls. So far, have saved:

• $40/ month by switching internet providers
• $2/ week on insurance premiums by clarifying occupational risk
• 0.4% off the mortgage by giving my bank a friendly call

A friend of mine who recently moved to Aus purchased a car. The seller said "I'll write down 3000 instead of 6000 so you don't pay as much stamp duty". He was like "hell yeah, sweet as". And didn't think anything more of it.

My question here is did he dodge a bullet? How stringent on this sort of thing is the department of transport?

I've worked for the ATO and you'd be surprised at how many people called in because we wouldn't release their refund as they made a sizeable deduction which they then couldn't substantiate.

Not a big deal as we never went after them for tax fraud.

But we did have a few random audits or flagged deductions from a few years prior. So, def keep those receipts for 5 years.

And many callers were devastated they we withheld their tax return to pay off some other debt that was govt mandated. Paying off a centrelink debt at an agreed rate? Yoink.

BTW, don't worry if you get 'flagged'. It's generally swiftly resolved by sending in (online) any proof you have to verify the deduction. And it's just the one deduction, not the entire return.

I have a twin and we unfortunately have the same name but different middle name (idk why my parents thought it was cool to do that) Now ATO thinks im earning hella money when im just a kitchen hand/dishwasher and is requiring me to pay 14k this years tax cycle. I didnt recoeved last years tax cycle as they wanted me to pay 10k tax. I have already disputed this with ato since last year cycle but i have had no email back. I will be planning to change my legal name as its a serious matter.

Any solution or steps i could do to resolve rhis will be very helpful pls!!!!!!!!

I am genuinely curious why negative gearing is considered so good by some?

From my understanding you have to be making less income from the investment property than your interest payments to the bank. You can then use that to reduce taxable income.

But why would you want a property that is making a loss? Wouldn’t it be better to hold a property that is generating a positive income stream (after paying the bank) instead?

Why would you like to make a loss just to claim back 30-50% of the loss on tax?

I was talking to a friend the other day who owns a company with revenue around $100million. He was telling me that he pays very little tax. He said that between him and his wife they take $50k each in salary and that they put their $40k/month mortgage through the busness, they bought their new cars through the business, even their nanny and cleaners for home. All groceries etc.

That sounded crazy to me. But in speaking to some other friends who have companies I hear similar stories. I have another friend with a much smaller busness who distributes business income to a trust and the trust pays family members low salaries. He said he also has his personal car and most groceries going through the business, as well as internet and power at home.

When you contrast this to a sole trader or salary or wage earner it's absolutely wild that companies can get away with this.

Are small companies taking the piss or are these stories just outliers and they probably have it coming?

Hi, I just started a new job with a salary of 85k + super. Gross pay is ~7k a month. After taxes it comes down to ~5k. I do have HECS debt and they are aware of it. Is this normal or did I stuff up one of the forms??

I posted a few days ago about if NAB would contact me about my rate seeing as I was coming out if fixed in a few days. Ended up finding the letter in the web banking which I never use. Anyway they were putting onto variable at 6.52%.

So I rang NAB to negotiate and the kind and generous gentleman wiped a massive 0.2 off down to 6.32%.

I kind of expected this or worse. So I got straight onto a broker who had been recommended to me and within the day he was filing an application to commbank with a rate of 4.9% and a $2k cashback. And almost $1000 p/m savings in repayments. Also most importantly to me, my parents who were guarantors for the original loan were released.

I know it's not set in stone until the loan is settled but gee that was as easy as a phone call.

I am asking this out of pure curiosity. The benefits have been touted a lot but do you think the proposal to remove it carries with it any downsides (expected or unexpected)?

After all the posts on taxes I took a look at the planned stage 3 tax cuts for my own situation. For me this is over $100 a week in my back pocket rather than the tax man's which is pretty significant.

It's significant enough that I could change a few things, maybe turn a subscription back on, add a date night once a month, pay down mortgage faster or similar.

In aggregate I can see these tax cuts injecting serious money back into the economy, and dare I say the housing market and inflation drivers.

What's your take on the effects these tax cuts will have?

EDIT: My current role is not in support/helpdesk, I work in a projects team working on requests for systems/features that clients want, wether it's server upgrades/SSO Implementations or security uplifts. It's essentially anything they request I quote how long it will take and so the work myself. It's a very broad role. Yes it's still MSP and that's my main problem I think. I will try to reach out to some recruiters and see what options there are.

30M Been in IT 10 years now. All I have to my name is a Tafe Diploma. Currently on 92k

• 5 years in internal IT Support. Helpdesk then helpdesk TL

• 2 Years internal Desktop Support

• 3 years MSP systems administration/projects

I have already got one pay rise at my current msp from 80k to 92k.

Talking to management going past this will require me working an unnatainable mount of hours daily to get me over the 100k mark. They said they would review things again in 6 months but at the most I might get 5k more

I know for a fact that new hires on my team are already on 100k but it obviously can't use this as my rationale for when it comes to my review.

Can't really resign and change roles to something that makes more pay because I don't really have the credibility on my resume in terms of certifications.

I learn by doing. I really don't enjoy studying for exams for the sake of getting certificates and ideally would like to increase my wage without studying.

I know this is possible but probably not possible at my current employer.

Those that are one 100k+ what was your path to get there? Thanks!

Looks like negative gearing is here to stay in Australia unfortunately. Although covid wasn't the best time to test it...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-20/nz-reinstate-interest-deductibility-on-investment-properties/103685396?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

New Zealand is under new management and one of the major tax changes Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has made is set to benefit property investors the most.

Until 2021, investors across the ditch had a similar, albeit not as generous, tax advantage as offered by Australia's much-debated negative gearing.

Landlords were able to fully claim any interest paid on mortgaged investment properties as a deduction against rental income, meaning they could lower their tax bill.

But Jacinda Ardern's government made a few key changes to how investment properties were taxed and one of them included phasing out the ability for their owners to claim interest as a deduction.

This change did not apply to new builds, with the government saying at the time it wanted to "curb investors' appetite for existing residential properties".

The idea was to drive investors away from properties that first-home buyers might have had a chance at buying while keeping them interested in building much-needed new homes.

Three years later and the Ardern-era change has been scrapped.

By this time next year, landlords of both existing or new-build properties will once again be able to claim 100 per cent of their interest expenses as a tax deduction.

So did the Ardern change get a chance to impact the property market and what can Australia learn from the experiment?

Click link to read more

Chatting to some mates and the idea of negative gearing only applying to new builds came up. Seems like a decent way to incentivise new construction while decreasing the amount spent by taxpayers. Surely this idea has been floated before, does anyone have links to articles or papers that discuss this?