Retirees still deserve concessional treatment on their superannuation, the treasurer says, despite mounting calls for an overhaul of the tax system.
Jim Chalmers said fairness for younger generations needed to be considered as part of any change to taxes, following talks at the three-day productivity roundtable in Canberra.
While he said calls for tax reform at the summit would inform upcoming federal budgets, he said there was no plan to alter concessional tax measures for retirees on their super balances.
“They still deserve concessional treatment to encourage people to be in superannuation, and that’s not something that we have been proposing to change,” Dr Chalmers told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“We need to ensure, collectively as Australians, that the fair go is the defining part of our future and not just the defining part of our past.”
Ahead of the summit, there were calls for attendees to consider changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing, as well as an overhaul of the GST.
While the treasurer said intergenerational fairness would be central to any changes, there would not be a rush on implementing reform.
“The best way to work out any additional steps beyond that is to do that in the government’s usual consultative and considered way, which is what we’re doing,” he said.
“We didn’t, at the conclusion of the roundtable, rewrite our policies in those areas. More broadly, intergenerational equity has been a motivation for so much of what we’re already doing in tax.”
The treasurer also confirmed proposed changes to tax on super balances over $3 million, would not be brought to parliament in the upcoming sitting fortnight, but would be brought in eventually.
“I proposed what is a pretty modest change, but a meaningful change which makes the system a bit more sustainable,” Dr Chalmers said.
“It doesn’t begin to be calculated until the second half of next year, and so we’ve got time to reintroduce that.”
While there was support at the economic summit for a road user charge for electric vehicle drivers, the treasurer said those who have petrol cars would not be double taxed for the measure.
It comes as shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien admitted the coalition got its tax position wrong ahead of the May federal election, when the opposition opposed broad tax cuts.
But he said he would not be surprised if the government introduced a raft of additional taxes.
“If you just keep on spending, you’ve got to get the money from somewhere,” he told Sky News.
“When you can’t control your spending, you’re just going to increase debt and increase taxes. That’s pretty clear.”
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