The Prime Minister isn't rule out changes to negative gearing in the lead up to the next election. There are reports that treasury is looking at the tax breaks fuelling speculation changes could be afoot.
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00:00The official line remains the same, that changing negative gearing is not part of the government's
00:09policy.
00:10They are clearly flying the kite here to test the waters of what the reception would be
00:14to potential changes to negative gearing.
00:18Well, not as significant as the changes that were proposed previously in 2016 and 2019.
00:26They are looking to see what the reception would be like if they did go to take that
00:32step to make changes.
00:35In so far as negative gearing, what that means is that taxpayers can make deductions on losses
00:43on their investment properties when it comes time to lodge their tax returns, limiting
00:49the amount of income tax that is payable by them.
00:53The Prime Minister is certainly not shutting the door on any prospect of making changes
00:59to negative gearing, saying he was quite comfortable with the idea that Treasury could be looking
01:05into potential changes to that policy.
01:08Take a listen.
01:09I've seen those reports and what we do is we value the public service.
01:15So from time to time, I'm sure the public service are looking at policy ideas.
01:20That's because we value them.
01:23But we have our housing policy, it's out there for all to see.
01:27Opinions on this particular subject are fairly well formed.
01:31It's far from the first time that this has gained attention, especially in recent times
01:39given the current state of the housing market.
01:42The opposition, though, is calling for more detail, accusing the government of having
01:48some sort of secret plan to make changes and saying that they do really need to come
01:53clean on exactly what form any potential tweak or larger change could have.
01:59Here's the Shadow Finance Minister, Jane Hume, making those comments earlier.
02:04The question is, of course, is who is commissioning this secret plan?
02:07Is it the Prime Minister, along with Jim Chalmers and Katie Gallagher?
02:10Are they doing it in conjunction with the Housing Minister, Clare O'Neill?
02:14Are they letting their cabinet know?
02:16Because this is the first that we've heard about it.
02:18Well, it is the first that we've heard about potential this time round.
02:22There have been previous attempts to make changes to this particular area of policy
02:29in 2016 and in 2019, Labor took plans to make significant changes to both negative gearing
02:37and also capital gains tax concessions to those elections.
02:42Labor went on to lose those elections and they've been very hesitant to make any sort
02:47of change in this area.
02:51Last week, in fact, we saw the Prime Minister respond to questions on this subject, suggesting
02:58that the questions were not terribly clever.
03:01Perhaps we will see further detail as to whether they were or weren't shortly.