New polling data from The Australia Institute and the Everybody’s Home housing rights alliance shows most Aussie voters want reduced tax breaks for property investors and more money for social housing.
Everybody’s Home says they’ve found the tax breaks benefiting more than a million landlords, while housing affordability is worse than ever.
The alliance teamed up with The Australia Institute last month to commission a survey of more than 1,500 Australians about property investment policy.
One in two respondents said they supported a reduction in tax concessions for property investors, specifically negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.
Pollsters said the support came from voters across the political spectrum including supporters of Labor, the coalition, One Nation, Greens, Independents and ‘other’.
The strong support contrasted with less than a third, or 28%, of respondents who said theyopposed the reductions.
Only 15% of Aussies agree with landlord tax breaks
Referring directly to the federal government’s estimated $20 billion annual housing budget,50% of survey respondents said they thought building more social housing was the best wayto spend it.
Only 15% of respondents said providing tax breaks to investors supplying rentals was the best option for government investment in housing.
Meanwhile, an Everybody’s Home report called From Profit to Loss shows the number of property investors benefiting from negative gearing has more than doubled to 1.1 millionsince the early 1990s.
‘These tax breaks have fuelled a landlord boom with more than one million now reaping the benefits, yet housing affordability has never been worse,’ said Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize when announcing the survey results.
‘Voters know that the billions of dollars that line the pockets of investors every year would be better off spent on solutions that ease the housing crisis,’ Ms Azize said.
Everybody’s Home is calling on the federal government to make the changes in the next national budget.
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