capital gains tax, page-6

I remember the good old days when we did not pay capital gain tax. I was just starting in shares and my capital gain on shares such as Woodside (Was about 60c then) and Oakbridge paid for the deposit on my first unit. No tax.

Later I think it was treasurer Keating introduced capital gains tax. It was indexed meaning adjusted for inflation.

When I sold my investment house which I had 4 years the capital gain only equaled the CPI and so no tax again.

Then the good old Howard and Costello gang pulled wool over everybody's eyes, got rid of indexing and instead introduced the 50% rule. Now as long as you have income tax you pay capital gain tax on capital profits.

The way I read it, if you stop earning income on 30th June and then realise your capital gain, then making sure that you do not get any income (such as interest or dole ) over $6000 in that financial year you still do not pay any tax because the capital gains is calculated on your marginal rates.

But most of us can not do that. We have our business friendly ex govt politicians to thank for it. Same as super surcharge that was only scraped last year. I think Howard and Cost were the biggest con artists Australia had seen since Houdini. Give me Paul Keating any time.

Brian