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How our journo sniffed out a sneaky new super tax · The Front

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, August 26, 2026. The Australian's economics editor, Matthew Cranston,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: scooped everyone before the federal budget and keeps breaking huge
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: yarns about nasty surprises you weren't supposed to know about.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Widows tax, death tax, soaring rents, crashing confidence. Now Matt's
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: revealing another whopper. The tax change that means super funds
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: will pay a higher effective tax rate on some investments.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: He's here in just a moment.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: It's a responsible budget and it's a reforming budget which
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: builds resilience and bolsters our economy.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: It was already billed as once in a generation.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But it's Labor's broken promises on property taxes that could
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: come back to bite. Matthew Cranston is the Australian's economics editor.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And even before the May 2026 budget, if you were
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: reading Matt's stories, you knew what was going to happen
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: because he broke all the big yarns about the changes
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to property taxes in particular and many other stories. Matt,
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  Speaker 1: you've now broken a new story about something that was
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: in the budget all along that perhaps people like me
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: didn't quite grasp the significance of. It's about superannuation.
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  Speaker 2: What does it mean?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, it took me over an hour and a
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  Speaker 4: half to work through this spreadsheet of people explaining to
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  Speaker 4: me how it works as well. But yeah, over 100
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: days since the budget and this one little thing has
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: come out and it's actually a really big thing. So
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  Speaker 4: everyone's got super, but how does that super make investments?
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: So you've got a super fund. They don't go and
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  Speaker 4: buy stocks, I don't know, clicking on Comsec. They invest
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  Speaker 4: in things like managed investment trusts. So- Whilst the tax
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  Speaker 4: rates on superannuation have not changed, the way the effective
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: tax rate works in these managed investment trusts has changed.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: And it's changed because of a technical thing called capital
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: loss ordering. So it just basically means when you make
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  Speaker 4: a loss on something, you can offset it against a gain.
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  Speaker 4: But now the ATO wants to say, okay, well, when
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  Speaker 4: you offset that loss, you have to only do it
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  Speaker 4: on these specific gains first.
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  Speaker 2: So that's an ordering thing.
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  Speaker 4: So what ends up happening is that the trust ends
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  Speaker 4: up having a higher effective tax rate in many circumstances.
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  Speaker 4: And then that means when they go to send that
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  Speaker 4: money on the investment back to the super fund, it's
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  Speaker 4: been hit with a higher level of tax. So therefore,
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: the super fund is therefore hit with a higher level
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  Speaker 4: of tax. Claire, it's called an effective tax rate. And
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  Speaker 4: a lot of Australians don't understand this effective tax rate
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  Speaker 4: and how it works.
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  Speaker 2: But it's effectively a higher tax on your super fund.
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  Speaker 1: All of these things in the budget that we've learned
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  Speaker 1: about since the budget was handed down, and we've learned
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  Speaker 1: about them because you've broken these stories. There was a
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  Speaker 1: widow's tax that the government hadn't told us about on
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: budget night. There was a death tax. That might be
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  Speaker 1: a bit of a cheeky way to talk about it,
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  Speaker 1: but it was a change to the way trusts are
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  Speaker 1: managed after someone dies. Were these unintended consequences of a
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  Speaker 1: big picture policy that Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese came
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  Speaker 1: up with, or was this part of the design all
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  Speaker 1: the way along and they've just been hoping nobody worked
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  Speaker 1: it out?
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  Speaker 4: It's a very good question. I think it's actually half
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  Speaker 4: and half. I mean, even that may be the wrong answer,
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: but a bit of both in the sense that sometimes
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: when we go to follow up these stories, I get
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  Speaker 4: a sense that sometimes the government and whether that's treasury
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: or the ATO or the treasurer's office or whatever, they
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  Speaker 4: might not be across it perfectly. And I'm not having
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: a go, but I'm just saying that that's the sense
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: that we pick up on. And it's sort of like, well,
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  Speaker 4: what is actually the rule here? What is actually the
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  Speaker 4: way to treat this vehicle or this person or this tax?
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  Speaker 4: And it takes hours to get a response. And I
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  Speaker 4: think that's because either they didn't actually know or they
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: did know and they just didn't want to tell people.
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  Speaker 1: I can imagine the dread on the faces of the
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  Speaker 1: people in the treasurer's office when they see your number
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  Speaker 1: on their phone. But that question of, let's say, in
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  Speaker 1: Jim Chalmers' office, you might be dealing with a media
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  Speaker 1: advisor or a policy advisor who might not necessarily know
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  Speaker 1: the fine detail of something that you're asking about. But
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  Speaker 1: the budget is worked up in the Treasury Department. Surely
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  Speaker 1: somebody in Treasury knew that all these things were the
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  Speaker 1: consequence of.
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  Speaker 2: 100%.
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  Speaker 4: And look, just with this super story today, it took
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  Speaker 4: hours and hours and hours for them just to come
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  Speaker 4: back after a question of, do MITs, do managed investment trusts,
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  Speaker 4: are they now subject to this new capital loss ordering?
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  Speaker 2: Hours and hours and hours and hours to get a response.
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  Speaker 2: And then when I did get a response, there wasn't
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  Speaker 2: an answer to that question.
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  Speaker 4: It was, we're doing consultation on it.
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  Speaker 2: Now, is that because they didn't know?
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  Speaker 4: And I suspect, and I've been told because people have
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  Speaker 4: spoken to them, said that they confirmed, yes, they are
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  Speaker 4: subject to the new capital loss ordering rules. And that's
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  Speaker 4: what I put in my story is that they had
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  Speaker 4: confirmed it to other people that this is the case.
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  Speaker 4: So they don't confirm it to me, but they confirm
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  Speaker 4: it to other people. And that's the difficulty of being
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  Speaker 4: a journalist is you don't get clear answers. But if
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  Speaker 4: they did know that, then is that their modus operandi?
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  Speaker 4: Is that, are they actually trying to change all the
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  Speaker 4: effective tax rates, not just the headline? So we've had
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  Speaker 4: this headline of the CGT and negative gearing, and that's
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  Speaker 4: all very clear what's happening there. But then how does
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  Speaker 4: that affect all these other investments? And how does it
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  Speaker 4: change the effective tax rates on things? And maybe they
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: do know that impact very much. And they're thinking, aren't
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  Speaker 4: we smart? We've now been able to raise more tax
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  Speaker 4: because the effective tax rates are affecting all sorts of
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  Speaker 4: other investments. And that's a great way to help the
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  Speaker 4: Labor government raise a net $ 77 billion from these tax changes.
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  Speaker 1: There's an ideological component, of course, to the big changes
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  Speaker 1: in the budget, the capital gains tax and negative gearing.
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  Speaker 1: These are things that, at Jim Chalmers' heart, I'm sure
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to achieve as Treasurer. We've always heard that
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to be a Treasurer who did things, who
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  Speaker 1: made big changes.
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  Speaker 3: Speaker, this is the most important and ambitious budget in decades.
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  Speaker 3: Important because the world is throwing a lot at us.
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  Speaker 1: But we're still talking about the budget. It's now late August. It's,
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  Speaker 1: as you say, more than 100 days old now. I'm
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: hearing from kind of senior people in Labor that it's
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: going to be OK. The election's a long way away.
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  Speaker 2: This will ease.
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  Speaker 1: Matt Cranston, we'll move on to something else. But then
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  Speaker 1: you get the sense from people who are perhaps a
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  Speaker 1: little bit more exposed to voter sentiment, like backbenchers, that
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  Speaker 1: they're not happy about this at all, that they're starting
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  Speaker 1: to panic.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think on the one hand, the tax changes,
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  Speaker 4: different tax changes come in at different times. And the
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  Speaker 4: July 1 start date to the changes in the 50%
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  Speaker 4: discount removal for CGT, the impact of that, you won't
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  Speaker 4: actually see the actual, actual, actual impact of it until
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  Speaker 4: late 2028 after the next election, right? So that's a
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  Speaker 4: big thing because if you don't know how much you're
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  Speaker 4: actually going to be hit, then you might be relaxed
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: and that could be helpful for the Labor government. They
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  Speaker 4: will obviously have to deal with the broken promise politics
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: around all that sort of thing. But then the antithesis
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  Speaker 4: to that is that over the next 12 months, as
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  Speaker 4: people prepare for that change, accountants are going to slowly
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  Speaker 4: start to tell all their clients and people are going
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  Speaker 4: to be informed of what they are likely to be
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  Speaker 4: hit with. So not what the actual is, but what
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  Speaker 4: they're likely to be hit with. Might they need to
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  Speaker 4: restructure from a trust into a company? Might they need
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  Speaker 4: to think about whether or not they are going to
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  Speaker 4: buy that new product and negatively gear it? Because once
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  Speaker 4: they buy a new product and negatively gear it, they
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  Speaker 4: can't then sell it to someone who wants to negatively
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  Speaker 4: gear it because it's then.
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  Speaker 2: Existing, not new. So there's all these little things that
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  Speaker 2: people are going to start.
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  Speaker 4: To wake up to, and that may actually do harm
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  Speaker 4: to Labor, because there might be more and more people
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  Speaker 4: learning about what these tax changes do.
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  Speaker 2: We try and do.
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  Speaker 4: A good job of explaining all these things to inform people,
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  Speaker 4: but not every journalist is out looking at effective tax rates.
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  Speaker 2: And people sort of don't understand it.
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  Speaker 4: So we're hearing also, and we wrote a story about
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  Speaker 4: this recently, that constituents are complaining to their MPs about
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  Speaker 4: how it affects them as they slowly start to find
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  Speaker 4: out about it. I intercepted an email or I received,
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  Speaker 4: I don't know what the verb is for that, but
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  Speaker 4: I got an email that showed that a Labor backbencher,
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  Speaker 4: Claire Clatterham, actually responding to a constituent who was concerned
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  Speaker 4: about the breadth of the CGT application. And she said
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  Speaker 4: that she agreed with that constituent saying that whilst it
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  Speaker 4: was good to have a tax change on property investments
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  Speaker 4: and the concessions around that, that she didn't agree that
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  Speaker 4: it should be used across all assets. Now, that's an
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  Speaker 4: amazing thing to come from inside labor. And then since
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  Speaker 4: that time that we wrote that, story, there's been almost
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  Speaker 4: a shutdown on the way Labor politicians respond to constituents.
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  Speaker 4: So I think that's actually a problem because if you
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  Speaker 4: don't respond, the concerns and the complaints gets pent up.
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  Speaker 4: So that might do harm to Labor as well. I'm
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  Speaker 4: not going to pretend I know how this is going
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: to play out. They're just some options of how it
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  Speaker 4: may play out.
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  Speaker 1: It's partly about the opposition being able or opposition figures
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  Speaker 1: being able to turn this into retail politics as well,
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  Speaker 1: isn't it? I remember when the franking credits policy was
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: put up by Bill Shorten and he was seeming to
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  Speaker 1: be cruising into the lodge and then the opposition.
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  Speaker 2: Said pension tax. Yeah, that's right. And that became what
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  Speaker 2: the election was about.
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  Speaker 3: We've come to meet the people that Bill Shorten wants
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  Speaker 3: to rock.
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  Speaker 1: So if the opposition isn't able to crystallise it, and
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  Speaker 1: this comes back to the point about complexity, doesn't it?
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Will they survive it?
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  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I tried to explain it and I'll
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: show as much humility as I can. I don't think
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: many people who didn't know about it any more clearer
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  Speaker 4: after my attempted explanation of.
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  Speaker 2: This super tax thing.
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  Speaker 4: But I gather they sense they should probably check it
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: for themselves. And if you're not doing that, then in
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: the words of Kerry Packer, you need your head read, right?
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  Speaker 4: If you're not trying to minimize your tax and to
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: think about how the government, which will be the highest
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: income taxing government in history this year, if you're not
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: thinking about that, then you need to.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: You have to. You should. And this is what our
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: paper is.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: We're getting more and more value, more and more readers
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: to our newspaper because this is what people are thinking.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, actually, I should know about this stuff.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Coming up, the big tax changes nobody's talking about. One
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of the scoops you broke before Budget Night was about
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the working Australians tax offset, the WADO, as our friend
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers calls it.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I love it. I think there was an Australian cricketer
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: who had that nickname.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there should be if there wasn't. That's a rebate
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  Speaker 1: on their income tax that Australians will get, $ 250. But
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  Speaker 1: I have never heard anyone go, oh, well, never mind.
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  Speaker 1: Don't worry about the widow's tax. We're getting the waddo.
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  Speaker 1: So what was the point of that? It's cost the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: government a fortune or will cost the government a fortune.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: It's interesting.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: It's a new architecture, if I can say that very
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: wonky word. Treasury have got this new architecture where they
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: can say, well, our principle is that we want to
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: divide up between how we tax labor income and how
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: we tax capital income. And they never really had a strong,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: effective way of doing that.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Now they do.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: They've got this architecture now where they can say, well, look,
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: we can start giving more back to people who only
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: ever make money from their hands and they're working, that
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: sort of thing. And we can level up, is what
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: they say. And there's a whole big debate among economists
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: about whether or not The tax treatment of capital and
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: the tax treatment of labor income should be the same.
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  Speaker 2: So if you've got a job, we like you.
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  Speaker 1: If you're earning your money from sort of nefarious things
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: like trusts, you know, we're going to punish you.
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  Speaker 4: Or shares or property or anything that you take a
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: risk and invest in or a small business. If you
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: go and use your residential premises to get the equity
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: to put into a small business, that's going to get
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: taxed differently. And so people need to sort of work out, well,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: how do they feel about that? How do they genuinely
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: feel about that? And then maybe they can think, well,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: is this the right thing to be doing? And the
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: Watto also allows them to make an announcement every year
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: that we're giving you more money back.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: We will put more money into the pockets of 13.3
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: million workers with a new $ 250 Working Australians tax offset.
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  Speaker 4: But, you know, in saying that, Claire, a lot of
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: people might say, well, You know, the water, I don't
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: even know what that is, but yeah, okay, when it
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: comes to budget time or even election time, I'll remember it,
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: and that's nice because it's the government giving me back money.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: But there's a thing called bracket creep, right?
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: And that is when your salary or your earnings move
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: up into a new threshold, you get taxed more. And
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: the coalition have actually got a policy to stop that
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: from happening, but you wouldn't sort of know about it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's the biggest ticket, one of their biggest
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: items in their policies in terms of expense. And it's
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: their way of challenging Watto because it's saying, well, we
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: don't need to give you.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Your money back.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: We just won't take it from you in the beginning
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: through this bracket creep and higher taxes. But I don't
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: think the sell on that has been effective.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Matt Cranston, thank you very much.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Pleasure, Claire.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Matthew Cranston is The Australian's economics editor. Our subscribers get
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: all Matt's scoops direct to their phones, along with all
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the nation's best political coverage. Join us at theaustralian.com.au.