TaxRambling.com

Having worked as a lobbyist for the Institute of Chartered Accountants (the exact title was a tax specialist) and in the office of the Assistant Treasurer under the previous Government, I am supposed to have my inside information on what will happen on Tuesday night…

But my imaginary inside mole has forgotten to email me the complete Budget papers… So I am going to tell you what will be in the Budget for tax and super from consulting the stars, my crystal ball and a my wife’s tea leaves.

The best part of doing this is that you can all chuckle at me when I get it very, very wrong.

No points for guessing that the highest marginal rate goes to 49% or that indexation is back for the fuel excise… But I reckon they will announce changes to the taxation of super but they will come in AFTER the next election.

If you want to share the pain then super is a place to tinker with – changes to earnings tax rate, changes to contributions tax rate… But only after the 2016 election as there have been enough broken promises.

There is a lot of reasons to change the taxation of super.

1. Since 1992 when SG kicked off there has been no reduction on the percentage of the elderly on the pension – super concession are not keeping people off the pension as is regularly argued.

2. I spoke to lots of people when Div 293 tax was introduced (the extra 15% contributions tax for those earning $300,000+) and everyone said they were not going to decrease super contributions – so the Goverment decreased the “encouragement” to put amounts into super and there was no change in the amounts contributed… This means the original concession was obviously too generous.

I don’t want to guess exactly what they will do but the guess is super changes in 2016… And pretty much nothing else.

You can all laugh at me at 7:30pm tommorrow!!!!