Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted that he should have promised Australians that Labor had no plans to change or touch the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) exemption on the family home.
The CGT is the tax paid when Australians sell their investments, such as stocks, bonds, or real estate. Homeowners in Australia, however, are exempted from paying CGT if they are selling their own residences.In an intense interview with Sevens’s Sunrise host David Koch on Wednesday, Chalmers was pressed several times on whether he could be trusted to not ever make a change to the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) exemption.
However, Chalmers refused to guarantee that Labor would not touch the CGT exemption, meaning homeowners could now be at risk of having to pay tax when selling their own place of residence in the future.
“So just say yes that you have absolutely guaranteed no changes ever to the Capital Gains Tax exemption on our family homes. You could just say yes, that you guarantee that,” said Sunrise host David Koch.
“I could say to your viewers that we haven’t been focused on it; we haven’t been working on it,” Chalmers replied.
Koch then repeatedly asked the treasurer to guarantee Labor would not be looking at capital gains taxes, to which Chalmers replied: “It’s not my intention, It’s not something I’ve been thinking about, working up, contemplating.”“We don’t know what the situation might look like in 10 or 15 years’ time,” he said.
