when was capital gains tax introduced in australia
Capital gains tax in Australia A capital gains tax (CGT) was introduced in Australia on 20 September 1985, one of a number of tax reforms by the Hawke/Keating government. The CGT applied only to assets acquired on or after that date, with gains (or losses) on assets owned on that date, called pre-CGT assets, not being subject to a CGT. In calculating the capital gain, the cost of assets held for 1 year or more was indexed by the consumer price index (CPI). This meant the part of a gain due to inflation was not taxed. Indexation was not used if an asset was held for less than 12 months or a sale results in a capital loss. Also, an averaging process was used to calculate the CGT. 20% of a taxpayer's net capital gain was included in income to calculate the taxpayer's average tax rate, and the rate was then applied to all the taxpayer's gross income (i.e., including the capital gain in full). So if a large capital gain were to push a taxpayer into a higher tax bracket in the tax year of sale, the brackets was stretched out, allowing the taxpayer to be taxed at their average tax rate.
Carbon pricing in Australia A carbon pricing scheme in Australia, commonly dubbed by its critics as a "carbon tax", was introduced by the Gillard Labor Government in 2011 as the Clean Energy Act 2011 which came into effect on 1 July 2012. It was in operation until it was repealed on 17 July 2014, and backdated to 1 July 2014. In its place the Abbott Government set up the Emission Reduction Fund in December 2014. As a result of being in place for such a short time, regulated organisations responded in a rather tepid and informal manner, with very few investments in emissions reductions being made.[2]