Luciferase,

"NG is a pathway for the mum's and dads to have a flutter.."

"Instead of beating the class drum, and claiming rorts and so on..."

Save it, mate - we all know who is making a killing from these taxing arrangements. If you're so outraged about a rort for the top echelon being removed, perhaps you can come up with a better arrangement - one that targets more fulsomely the ordinary mums and dads without providing a feeding trough for the nobs to gorge themselves?

"The Grattan Institute notes that 54% of the benefits from negative gearing goes towards the top 20% of taxpayers. But importantly, because negative gearing is used to reduce people’s taxable income the report also notes that when you look at peoples’ incomes before taking out the rental losses, the benefits are even more unequally distributed – with 47% going to the top 10% and 68% to the top 20%."

Graph:

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ScreenHunter_7244-Apr.-28-13.45.jpg

It'a always a "class war" when the richest have their rorts nobbled....

Luciferase,

The argument that “mum's and dads [can] have a flutter without forming a company structure” loses its meaningfulness and significance once new people can no longer enter the market. At some point (probably where we’re at now), all that is created (granted not just by negative gearing, but by overseas investment), is a permanent, intergenerational separation between the haves and the have-nots in which social mobility is virtually impossible. That’s not conducive to societal health. All it creates is social unrest, and history is a litany of examples of this.

Waleed Aly put the negative gearing issue well: http://www.facebook.com/BillShorten/videos/991522904217604

Poirot,

You are no spring chicken. With your knowledge of the certainty of windfall profits to be made from tenanted housing you must be a millionaire many times over.

So, how many properties in that investment portfolio of yours? What about your gross and net earnings, do tell?

Or like the major investment houses have you decided instead that providing and managing rental property is fraught with risks (legislative risks too as proved by both sides of government) and poor returns and the management is too costly and difficult to bother with?

If you agree with the major investment houses such as insurance and superannuation, NONE of which speculate their investors' money on rental housing, you would also be joined by both State and federal governments, all of whom have been moving over the years to divest themselves of those very difficult and management-intensive welfare and low income tenants and have been pushing the load onto the private sector.

You can cherry-pick 'research' modelling (the asterisks note the carefully slanted briefs on many) all you like to bash the LNP, but at the end of the day there is no challenging the very obvious truth that large corporation and government regard the sector as distasteful and to be avoided and for damned good reasons.

Is your L'il Willie Shorten planning to provide and manage more welfare and low income housing?

NO, NOT on your Nellie! What Shorten is about is increasing tax by introducing a new tax on a new sector.

@AJ Philips, Friday, 29 April 2016 4:40:14 PM

Wedge politics. Beating the intergenerational jealousy drum and quoting 'Little Wally' on L'il Willie Shorten's faceache page.

I can't remember the exact figures, but the top 20% pays 60% of the tax.
The bottom 20% pays zero tax.
Those figures are not accurate but they do give the idea.
So beware what you wish for the top 10% or so, they might pull the plug.

Thanks Bazz,

Not forgetting the nearly 600 mega-companies that pay no tax - we wouldn't want them to pull the plug.

"Australian boardrooms are braced for the release of tax data on Thursday morning that will name 579 of the country's largest corporations that paid no tax in 2014."

http://www.afr.com/news/policy/tax-office-to-name-579-companies-that-paid-no-tax-20151216-glp3vc#ixzz47CfOSZ93

Or the 55 millionaires who did the same...

"Tax statistics released Wednesday reveal that 40 of them claimed an extraordinary $42.5 million for the "cost of managing tax affairs" meaning they each paid an average of $1 million to an adviser prepared to help to bring down their taxable income, which is itself a tax deduction.
Between them they reported earning $129.5 million, an average of $2.3 million. By the time their accountants had finished with them they reported losing a combined $12.8 million.

The implausibility of someone earning $2.3 million and paying half of it to a tax adviser suggests some may be understating their earnings."

(Just a tad)

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tax-office-statistics-reveal-the-55-millionaires-who-paid-no-tax-20150429-1mw2zp.html

AJ Philips

That video explainer by Waleed Aly is excellent.