Labor rules out plans to introduce death taxes

“I want to call out the latest bit of rubbish from the government lie machine, and that is the so-called death tax. There’s actually only one leader who’s actually never ruled out a death tax, and that’s the current Prime Minister,” Mr Shorten said.

“Labor has never had any plan for a death tax under my leadership.”

Mr Shorten ruled out any plans for a death tax under Labor and labelled the speculation about the proposed tax as “ridiculous propaganda”.

Back in January this year, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg issued a statement suggesting that death taxes were a possibility under a Labor government.

“Given Labor is already proposing to tax Australians from the cradle to the grave, it is certainly not out of the question that Labor would consider taxing people beyond the grave,” Mr Frydenberg said in the press release.

Mr Frydenberg also referred to a policy document by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) from their Congress in July last year, and suggested that Labor may “cave to its demands”.

The ACTU stated that consideration should be given to taxing the inheritances in the hands of the beneficiary.

“A lifetime threshold could be made available to the taxpayer with tax payable once cumulative inheritances exceeded the threshold,” the ACTU stated in its policy document.

Death duties were abolished in Australia in 1979. However, in the context of superannuation, the death of a member can still give rise to various taxes and duties.

Since 1 July 2017, death benefit pensions have counted towards the surviving spouse’s $1.6 million transfer balance cap.

This limit may force benefits to come out as a lump sum to the surviving spouse because the law still requires super to be paid out as soon as practicable after a person’s death. When this occurs as a lump sum and an asset such as real estate needs to be transferred out, this can trigger a CGT event for the super fund.