By Luke Kinsella
Wilson Asset Management founder Geoff Wilson has slammed the Albanese government’s overhaul of the capital gains tax discount that is expected to be included in the budget on May 12.
“This isn’t reform. It’s a direct assault on aspiration, risk-taking, and wealth creation,” Wilson, a frequent critic of Labor’s plans to change the tax system, wrote on LinkedIn and X overnight.
“The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Boomers and Gen X built wealth under the 50 per cent discount for decades. Now the government is pulling up the ladder and calling it progress. This is intergenerational betrayal, not equity.”
Wilson was a prominent public campaigner against the plan that Labor took to the 2019 election, which it lost, to wind back franking credits for share investors. He was also a vocal critic of Chalmers’ plan last year to tax unrealised gains in large superannuation accounts.
In February, Wilson proposed different capital gains tax discount rates for businesses, existing housing and new housing.
Wilson’s comments come ahead of the budget’s release on Tuesday and a few days before it is usually printed.
Wilson, who made four posts on LinkedIn overnight about Labor’s planned tax changes in the space of 10 hours, called the reforms a “brutal raid on every young Australian trying to build a better future”.
Wilson said the changes will “double the tax on young Australians’ success”. The plan to return to the pre-1999 model of indexing capital gains, rumoured to be what the government is leaning toward, means the tax paid by investors depends on inflation and an investment’s rate of return.
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