Campaign begins to convince Greens of flaw in taxing unrealised capital gains: Wilson
Convincing the Greens to push against the government’s plans to tax unrealised capital gains is the next challenge, one of Australia’s corporate leaders has said.
Geoff Wilson, chairman of Wilson Asset Management, said that while he supports the Greens’ commitment to calling on the government to amend the $3 million super tax by allowing indexation, it is now a priority to educate them about the impact of taxing unrealised capital gains.
“I am very supportive of the Greens and have a lot of respect for them,” he told SMSF Adviser.
“This is the logical conclusion to this legislation, which is grossly flawed and illogical. The Greens proposal of indexing it and even lowering the threshold to $2 million will be much more beneficial to the Australian population.”
Wilson said the numbers being quoted by the government that suggest the proposed tax will only impact a small number of high-net-worth individuals is incorrect.
“They are not using real-life numbers. In the white paper we released before the election, we showed that within 30 years, 8.1 million Australians will be over the $3 million mark – that is more than half of the people who have got super funds now,” he said.
“This is effectively a tax on young people, on innovation and on risk taking – on what Australia has been built on, the ability to have a fair go. The government has to ask itself whether the $1.1 trillion in SMSFs would then want to put their capital at risk if they may end up paying tax on it?”
He continued that from conversations with some of the 130,000 shareholders in his own company, they are now considering taking their money out of superannuation.
“The government is delusional if it believes it will raise the tax it is talking about because everyone is adjusting their portfolios – that is lost revenue,” he said.
“If the Greens vote against this legislation, it won’t make it through the Senate. And I take my hat off to crossbench senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie. They have stood incredibly firm against this. That’s the reason there is so much discussion on this issue now. The government said it had a mandate following the election, but it doesn’t have a mandate on this.
“No one expected the current make-up of the Senate and really believed this legislation was dead and buried.”
Wilson said his belief in the Greens in challenging the legislation stems from their support in overturning the franking credits changes the government wanted to introduce in 2019, and he is confident that they are “firm” in their push for the indexation of this current legislation.
“My challenge now is convincing them of the negative impact of taxing unrealised gains ... There is always a risk in politics that people can get bribed,” he said.
“But the interesting thing for me is, if this does go through, it will put a nail in the coffin of the Labor Party because once anyone has had explained to them how taxing unrealised capital gains works, they understand it is flawed.”
As he did when fighting against the franking credits, Wilson launched a petition against the proposed super tax, and in two days, the number of signatures reached nearly 8,000.
He said almost half of those have come from people who do not have an SMSF.
“Since the petition was launched, it has blown our previous petition on franking in 2018–19 out of the water. It is attracting a 41,250 per cent higher level of interest than that of the franking credits,” he said.
“This is a strong signal that all Australians know taxing unrealised gains is flawed and needs to be stopped.”
He added that the petition is an attempt to bring the issue to the forefront of people’s minds, and although it is “great” that corporate Australia is speaking out, he is now trying to get the information to “trickle down” to the man in the street.
“The position of Labor winning again in three years’ time is questionable. If I was a Labor politician who won by only a small margin, I would be putting as much pressure as I can on the government,” he said.
“They know in their hearts this is bad policy, and if the voting public knows it and Labor brings it in regardless, it is a breach of their social contract with everyone who puts money into super.”