Susan Stone

Susan Stone, Credit Union SA Chair of Economics at Adelaide University.

There certainly is.

It's quite a complicated area.

And there, as you said, there's a lot going on because this cuts across a lot of issues.

And I think that's why it's getting so much attention.

Yes, it has.

That's for sure.

The issue is with businesses, they're concerned about a couple of things.

You know, businesses, when they sell a business or they issue, you know, some kind of if someone cashes in shares in a publicly traded business or even in a private business, they have to pay capital gains.

And therefore, now with the changes in the law, the amount that they pay on those capital gains is reduced.

more than likely to increase.

The issue is we don't really know how much because unlike many OECD countries that have a separate capital gains tax that's either flat or some of them are progressive, which means they change with the income level, Australia's capital gains tax is part of our individual tax that we pay to the government.

So how much you're actually going to end up paying on capital gains depends very much on what your taxable income is.

Yeah, that's probably a worst case scenario.

Someone who is already making a great deal of money.

I mean, we have to also keep in mind that less than 1% of Australian taxpayers pay about 30% of all capital gains.

So when you're talking about like those really high levels of tax, it's because people have high levels of income.

Exactly.

The ones that will really be impacted and who have some legitimate concerns are startups and high growth firms, because it's these firms that...

they often use equity shares.