this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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57
Richest super balances to be taxed at higher rates after Greens agree to back Labor plan (www.theguardian.com)
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[–] Nath@aussie.zone 23 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

I have no idea why every news article on this matter makes it sound like everyone should be against these changes. Superannuation has for decades been a neat place to dump surplus salary to get it taxed at a lower income tax rate.

Under the superannuation tax changes, the concessional tax rate on earnings for balances between $3m and $10m will double from 15% to 30%.

Balances above $10m will be subject to a new, higher 40% rate.

Most of us are not affected by these changes. I truly, genuinely wish I were affected.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 11 points 2 days ago

I have no idea why every news article on this matter makes it sound like everyone should be against these changes

Broadly speaking: because news corporations aren't owned by normal people. Reporting this kind of (mild, but nonetheless real) attack on the most wealthy in a positive light is a sure way to get censored and disciplined by the company.

Quoting the print and digital media section of GetUp's media diversity report (2021):

  • News Corp is the dominant owner of Australian print and digital media, controlling 59% of metropolitan and national readership — up from 25% in 1984
  • Nine is the second-largest media owner with a combined 23% readership share. Seven West Media Limited has 15% of the market by readership (eureka's note: 59+23+15 = 97%)
  • News Corp now controls the majority of local and regional newspaper titles in Australia

It doesn't take much digging into these three companies' major stakeholders to find key people with net worth in the billions. And unless you're going out of your way to avoid them, most news articles you'll see are controlled by this upper owning class through various filters (incl. board selection of executives, editorial policy, advertiser pressure).

[–] Geobloke@aussie.zone 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If you retire at 60 with 3 million in super, you could spend $70k per year for 40 years

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

With $3m in super, you could draw $100k/year and assuming 5% growth you'd have over $3.5m after 10 years:

Year,Starting Balance,Withdrawal,Interest Earned (5%),Year-End Balance  
1,"$3,000,000","−$100,000","+$145,000","$3,045,000"  
2,"$3,045,000","−$100,000","+$147,250","$3,092,250"  
3,"$3,092,250","−$100,000","+$149,613","$3,141,863"  
4,"$3,141,863","−$100,000","+$152,093","$3,193,956"  
5,"$3,193,956","−$100,000","+$154,698","$3,248,653"  
6,"$3,248,653","−$100,000","+$157,433","$3,306,086"  
7,"$3,306,086","−$100,000","+$160,304","$3,366,390"  
8,"$3,366,390","−$100,000","+$163,320","$3,429,710"  
9,"$3,429,710","−$100,000","+$166,485","$3,496,195"  
10,"$3,496,195","−$100,000","+$169,810","$3,566,005"

"But $100k won't be enough in ten years!" I hear you say. Ok, let's give ourselves a 10% pay-rise every 10 years.

Year Range,Annual Withdrawal,Year-End Balance (End of Decade)  
Years 1–10,"$100,000.00","$3,566,005"  
Years 11–20,"$110,000.00","$4,355,900"  
Years 21–30,"$121,000.00","$5,497,281"  
Years 31–40,"$133,100.00","$7,196,668"

With a starting fund of $3m, and a 10% payrise every decade, after 40 years we have over $7m in our super fund. Now, what happens to our poor rich person who needs to pay 30% on growth above $3m?

Year,Annual Withdrawal,Ending Balance,Annual Tax Paid
1,"$100,000","$3,045,000",$0
10,"$110,000","$3,472,749","~$6,144"
20,"$133,100","$3,871,911","~$12,048"
30,"$161,051","$4,110,378","~$15,716"
40,"$194,872","**$4,052,857**","~$15,271"

Instead of ending up with $7m after 40 years, this poor individual now only has $4m after 40 years.

As I said, I really wish I had this problem!

[–] No1@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Sure $3M would be a nice 'problem'.

But I'm more concerned about poor suckers like me and maybe you.

Your key assumption is that the asset value never goes down. And you are ignoring the impact of inflation.

We are looking at long terms here, and when and where things happen matters.

So, in the case of a 'comfortable' $800K (lol i wish). Well, if the market tanks, that could easily be 400K. Not so comfortable now? And the $50K a year you were taking out, maybe you have to halve that to make it last. Oh, and whatever you were drawing out? $50K in 10 years time, assuming 4% inflation, is only worth 2/3 of whatever you take out today. And if you start budgetting for increased health care and aged care as you grow older, well....

Even this has a large dose of 'assumes the status quo' in it

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago

This article is discussing a tax on earnings in super funds above $3m.

I think that people who are earning more than my annual salary just from growth in the value on their pile of cash should be charged tax on that growth.

They can afford it better than any of us, and I'm always amazed at people who think this is a bad thing.

None of the present changes apply to your examples.

Perhaps that's the answer to my question: people criticise this tax because they worry it'll affect them?

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

If you have $3m in Superannuation, with a standard 6% ROI annually, you could spend $180K of “earned interest” every year without ever touching your principal.

[–] minimumchips@aussie.zone 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Because wages are inadequate and passive wealth or capital inheritance are the new pathway to upward social mobility. It's not that I think most people think like this (yet), but news articles are mostly written by people from wealth now, because who can live on a journalist wage these days.

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 11 points 2 days ago

People with inadequate wages don't have $3m super accounts. This law affects 0.5% of Australians.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

but news articles are mostly written by people from wealth now, because who can live on a journalist wage these days

That's a bold claim; I don't disagree that journalists are generally underpaid, but none of the journalists I personally know are particularly wealthy afaik. (Obviously this is my anecdotal experience)

Although furthermore, journalists don't have to be wealthy to be pressured into writing in support for the wealthy. This is a systemic part of how major news companies are run to satisfy their ultrawealthy major stakeholders (see my other comment: TL;DR ~97% of news readership funnels up to News Corp, Nine or Seven). Someone trying to write articles against the interests of the company owners won't last long.

General reminder to the people reading this article: whether they understand or not, someone with a net worth of 10 million is a hundred times closer to a houso than they are to a billionaire.

[–] minimumchips@aussie.zone 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Very good points. I withdraw my comment as it was definitely an overreach.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

And there's definitely times where there are wealthy journalists/writers too, so I see what you mean. I can think of many US/international grifters who adopt a rustic, masculine, working class image but have university backgrounds in media production and rich parents funding their failed art careers. Relevant video

[–] observes_depths@aussie.zone 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Interesting last point, if I understood right. Putting it another way, if you have a piece of gold worth $100,000, you need 10 to have $1 million, but you need 10,000 of those gold pieces to have $1 billion.

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 2 points 1 day ago

The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 3 points 2 days ago

Sure! You just reminded me of this small* site which helps visualise it: Wealth, shown to scale

[–] FreedomAdvocate 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That logic is bad because while yes, it’s taxed at a lower rate, you can’t access it until you turn 67!!! If you access it before then you get slugged with a huge tax on it.

It’s like when I see people telling others who are struggling to put food on the table or petrol in the car to make sure they contribute to their own super to the max every year - it’s a stupid idea, yet many of the people who say things like that also think like you do in your post, which makes no sense.

Successful people are already punished enough by the tax man for being good at what they do. Finding more ways to fuck them over isn’t going to end well for our country and economy, as eventually they’ll all up and leave, taking 50% of the countries income tax with them.

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Do you honestly think that 0.5% of the population are responsible for 50% of the nation's income tax? That's hysterical.

We aren't talking about specialist doctors and lawyers and successful salespeople. Those peasants on their measly half-million annual salaries are not putting enough away to be affected by this law.

In point of fact, these people are rich enough to employ wealth managers and accountants to manage their tax affairs. Retainers who know and utilise every tax loophole to minimise the tax they pay. You'd be surprised how little as a percentage of their income they are paying the ATO. Economically, we would miss none of them if they left.

We're talking about people who are putting over $100k per year into their super funds. They are not moving in the same circles as you and me.

[–] FreedomAdvocate 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The top 1% of earners pay roughly 40-45% of all income tax. Did you seriously not know this?

Also…..you don’t get an accountant to do your taxes? You’ve never used a financial advisor?

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The top 1% of earners pay roughly 40-45% of all income tax.

That's not true, though it's a common misconception. To account for 40% of all income tax, you'd need to incorporate the top 5% of earners. Top 1% vs. top 5% doesn't sound significant, but it truly is. Someone in the top 1% makes roughly twice the amount someone in the top 5% makes. We're actually talking about different things and the same things all at the same time. It's confusing, but bear with me and I'll hopefully get us onto the same page.

Income streams are logarithmic in nature. This is why we always talk about "median salary" when discussing the topic. If we use the "average" salary (mean), then that would come out to roughly $106,000. However, if you are earning this amount, you're in the top 25% of earners in Australia. The median salary sits at around $68,000. That number amazes me, since our rent alone is $41,600. I have no clue how people are surviving on the median, let alone half the nation on less than that.

Someone in the top 20% is making $128,000.
Someone in the top 10% is making $165,000. Not a massive jump in salary, this seems reasonable.
Someone in the top 5% is making $195,000. Again, that's only a $30k jump to account for a decent chunk of the population.
Someone in the top 1% is making $385,000. Roughly double the amount for someone in the top 5%. To speak to your point, their increase in take-home pay is only about $100,700, because yes - they pay 45% tax.
Someone in the top 0.5% is making over $550,000.

Now that we have these numbers out of the way, here's why we're talking about different things: Someone in the top 0.5% of earners still likely doesn't have $3m in super. Or if they do, it's just barely.

Someone in this salary bracket doesn't hit it at 20. They usually hit it in their late 40's to 50's. At that point, they only have 20ish years of work left before they retire. If we assume our top earner is depositing $50,000 into their super fund at 5% growth, it'll take them 28+ years to attain $3m. They just don't have time to get to the point where they are affected by this policy. Or if they are super lucky and have managed to attain say $3.1m, they're only taxed 30% on the earnings of $100k - not the earnings of the remaining $3m.

So, like I said: We're talking about different things. The top 0.5% earners are not the same as the top 0.5% super fund holders. The top 0.5% super fund holders are not getting there from regular income. They are rich. They probably don't work, because they don't need to. They probably don't pay much income tax, because they don't need to work. You probably pay more income tax than these people.

[–] No1@aussie.zone 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Well $3M sounds like a lot now, but I hope they index it, because the way inflation and money printing is going, that will be worth about $3.50 in a decade or two, so everyone will be caught by it.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Don’t buy into the fear-mongering being pushed.

For a comfortable retirement in 2026, the amount required is ~$800K (this is already on the high end).

Assuming a consistent worst-case inflation rate of 4% every year (double the RBA target), it would take 25 years to hit $2m - let alone the $3m+ in question here.

There is a very small, very wealthy cohort with $3m+ in superannuation savings - and you, statistically speaking, aren’t part of it.

Fuck ‘em - they need to be taxed more.

[–] No1@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I get and support the gist of this.

In terms of dollar values, I worry about 2 things:

  • the official CPI figures don't track to the actual cost of living, eg mortgages aren't included
  • the issue of money/government debt is uncontrolled

Maybe if it was set as the equivalent of $3M in gold as at 12 March 2026 I'd be OK....

PS:800k might be the comfortable today, but there have been multiple times the share market etc has halved, or even lost 90% of it's value. Unless you have 2x to 10x 800k, and have a living portion in liquid assets, you are not immune.

As an alternate POV, if somebody had $5M in super today, would we be OK with no extra tax if the markets crashed 50% and that meant their super was only worth $2.5M now? And the $3M fatcat who only held shares in his dodgy cousin's company that tanked, some NFTs, and cryptocurrency was now worth $100k?

[–] FreedomAdvocate -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Fuck ‘em - they need to be taxed more

You say this about the people that pay the majority of all income taxes already lol. When did this commie “successful people should be penalised more and more for being successful!” ideology become so popular in Australia?

No amount of extra tax from the wealthy is going to result in reduced taxes for everyone else. The wealthy and the high earners already pay almost all of the tax. All it’s going to do is end up in more government waste and corruption.

Also……why do they need to be taxed more? Are they using more government services than everyone else? Do they get special roads that only they get to drive on?

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When did this commie “successful people should be penalised more and more for being successful!” ideology become so popular in Australia?

The commie perspective is that the owning class (not the same as having a lot of money or "being successful"!) gain profit off the backs of workers, and therefore we don't get our fair share of the value we produce. High taxation isn't a commie idea, it's a social democrat (capitalist) idea to try and moderate the broken system that lets the boards of mining giants sit in billionaire luxury while selling the soil beneath our feet for themselves.

But that's nitpicking the premise. A better answer to your question:

In 1951, the top marginal tax rate for incomes above £10,000 (equivalent to $425,000 today) was 75 per cent. From 1955 until the mid-1980s the top marginal tax rate was 67 per cent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_Australia#Historical_personal_income_tax_rates_and_brackets for more info

So "a bloody long time ago" is my guess.

[–] FreedomAdvocate 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That entire perspective is absurd joke. People being paid to do their job are getting what they’re owed. If they want to start a business they can go ahead and do it and reap the rewards…..or the losses. That’s the risk.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago

People being paid to do their job are getting what they’re owed.

Is this claiming that the amount someone deserves is determined by their contract? That's an odd assumption, even if it's a normalised one.

We live under a system where millions of people don't have, and can't get, the capital (or expertise) needed to start their own legal profitable business, and effectively must resort to selling themselves to earn a living wage. And even if that wasnt the case, we obviously can't all run individual businesses in this system without being outcompeted and being forced back into proletarianisation. Most of the population being workers rather than business owners isn't some personal decision, it's a basic premise of capitalism.

And there isn't much power a worker has to influence what salaries are being offered on the market. The business owner sets the wage, and if there are enough unemployed and underemployed people looking for jobs to avoid homelessness, business owners collectively decide how low they can all go (and luckily there's a minimum wage so they can't just race to the bottom livable wage). So there's no material reason to assume that a person only deserves the amount their salary is - it's not based on how useful a worker is, just on how low a business owner can offer.

Let's take an extreme example to illustrate: slave labour. Or let's dial it back: prison labour - Canberra Times reports prisoners get paid about $2 an hour for their labour, AusPrisons.com lists weekly rates the same ballpark. I got paid far more as a teen performing menial minimum wage factory work. Clearly these people are being paid so low because its legal to do so and because they're not in a good position to decline such abysmal offers. Not because their labour isn't valuable, not because their work isn't worth more, not because the business owner is taking more risk. It's because they're vulnerable employees and they can be exploited more for profit.

As a side note:

People being paid to do their job are getting what they’re owed

I have been underpayed thousands of dollars by multiple jobs. So I'm not even getting paid what I'm legally owed until I or the union point out the wage theft.

[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What's your suggestion? Tax low income more? People of wealth have a significant ability to manipulate and reduce tax bills. I don't think payroll tax is the answer, but taxing wealth, assets and corporations is.

[–] FreedomAdvocate 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No, taxing wealth and assets isn’t the answer. People shouldn’t be punished simply for being successful and owning things.

Your last point is - making corporations actually pay taxes. No more Apple Australia buying iPhones from Apple Scotland for the exact same price they sell them to customers for, meaning no profit in Australia, for example. No more mining giants paying nothing to literally sell the ground out from under us.

Income tax should be abolished, and instead make it spending/usage based. Spend more pay more.

The only thing I agree with “taxing the rich” for is fines - they should be percentage based. $1000 for your passenger having their seatbelt slightly off hurts someone earning $60k a lot more than it hurts someone earning $600k.

[–] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not punishment for being wealthy, it's giving back to the community that helps you live in luxury. The taxes won't send them broke, or make a big dent in their savings.

And I agree with the fines. Should be a minimum plus a percentage of your last financial year's income.

[–] FreedomAdvocate 1 points 1 day ago

It is punishment. The wealthy already “give back” far more than the rest of the population in terms of tax.

It’s just pure jealousy.