Albo’s Unrealised Gains Tax: Socialist Folly Unleashed, By James Reed
Anthony Albanese and Greens boss Larissa Waters are unleashing a tax nightmare: a 15% levy on unrealised capital gains for superannuation balances over $3M, set to hit July 1, 2025. That's taxing wealth you haven't pocketed, like billing you for a house's value jump before you sell it. Waters wants the threshold cut to $2M, claiming it's "fairer" to snag more revenue. Fair? It's a socialist heist, and it's poised to wreck Australia's economy.
We've seen this play before. In the 1900s, Australia's land taxes crushed farmers, forcing sales to pay levies on inflated values. Inheritance tax plans in the 1970s sparked outrage, dying under public revolt. Now, Albo and Waters resurrect this ghost, with the Greens' fingerprints all over it. Waters pushed a 40% wealth tax in 2020, and her $2M UCGT tweak is just another stab at redistribution, not justice.
Here's the sting: your super fund's assets, stocks, farms, startups, rise on paper. No sale, no cash, but you owe tax. A $1M unrealised gain? Fork over $85,500 or sell assets and crash markets. Economists, business giants, and even Labor's Paul Keating call it madness: startups will fold, capital will flee, and super trust will erode. A hypothetical Deloitte-style estimate warns of $10B in capital flight by 2027. Startup founders, stuck with illiquid shares, face ruinous tax bills. Family farms, land-rich but cash-poor, may lose generational holdings. It's economic suicide. Inflation bloats gains, yet pollies' trusts often skate free, per online gripes.
If taxing unrealised gains is so righteous, why not tax your car's market value yearly? Your home's appraisal? Your vintage wine or Pokémon cards? Can't pay? Auction them off. What about unrealised losses, where's Albo's refund? Or how about stamp duty on every property value tick? Absurd, right? Yet the UCGT hits super while sparing other assets, exposing the Left's hypocrisy. Like banning machetes, they target what suits their control game here, wealth, not fairness.
Why now? The Greens hold Senate balance-of-power, and Labor's election landslide emboldens Albo. Waters' "no difficulties" with UCGT (The Australian, May 27, 2025) is a power play: back Labor for a $2M concession, cementing Green clout. They're taxing aspiration, not just wealth. This echoes Labor's 2019 franking credits fiasco, which hammered retirees until voters roared. The UCGT's 2% super account target (at $2M) isn't revenue, it's a signal: success is the enemy.
What's the fix? Index the $3M threshold to inflation, as Waters herself nods to, sparing real gains. Exempt illiquid assets like startups and farms, as Canada's 2024 CGT hike did. Chase tax havens globally, not local battlers; OECD talks are already underway. Boost ASIC to hunt real evasion, not paper profits. These are practical, not Albo's cash-grab fantasy.
The UCGT isn't policy; it's ideology, punishing ambition to feed bureaucracy under "equity." Albo's mandate doesn't greenlight stupidity, and Waters' tears won't cover your tax. Will we let this socialist folly gut super, or push back?
"Labor's controversial tax on unrealised capital gains is on track to gain the approval of the Greens, setting up a test for Jim Chalmers over whether to run with the left-wing party's support or listen to the ALP elders, business leaders and economists warning him to dump the proposal.
With the Senate vote count all but settled, and the Greens to have a balance-of-power veto over Anthony Albanese's second-term agenda, new leader Larissa Waters has declared she sees "no difficulties" with the unrealised gains tax plan despite the Greens having held up the proposal before Labor's election landslide.
While the Greens are yet to formalise their position for the next term of parliament, and Senator Waters saying she still wants to see Labor cut the UCGT threshold for superannuation balances from $3m to $2m, she offered her first signal that she ultimately believed her party would support changes to unrealised gains.
"We put our suggestions to government, and that was that we thought the threshold should be lower than $3m because that only captures half a per cent of people, and we thought a $2m threshold … would raise more revenue and would be a fairer approach. And we're still of that view," Senator Waters told The Australian on Tuesday.
"We haven't met again as a partyroom to discuss that particular issue. And we'll obviously wait to see what the government puts forward … and continue those discussions. I'm hopeful that we can see a good outcome there. In the broader sense, we don't have difficulty with that concept (of taxing unrealised capital gains). It's what the government has proposed. We're prepared to consider it."
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