Australia news live: Queensland Labor ahead in Stafford byelection despite large swing

Follow the day’s news live Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Jim Chalmers claims the tax reform elements of this week’s budget are “broadly neutral” over the forward estimates. Asked by Insiders host David Speers how much extra tax the changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts actually raise, Chalmers said the changes would also “[return] what we are raising to workers and businesses, principally small businesses.” Now, over the 10-year period, the capital gains and negative gearing changes are a little bit over $40 billion and the trust changes are also a little bit over $40 billion. But there’s also the tax cuts in there, the working Australian tax offset, over the course of the next 10 years, there’s loss-carryback tax cuts for business. There’s many billions of savings. There’s no doubt about that. We’ll put all our costings out, as is the convention, in the lead up to the election, but it’s many billions of savings in this. And this is all about making sure Australian taxpayers’ dollars are well spent, are focused on the benefits of Australians and making Australians better off. What we’re proposing here is each year the housing minister would say we’ve built this many houses, and so the immigration number, the net overseas migration number, can be X. Continue reading...

Original source: Guardian