Robert Carling’s CGT inquiry evidence covered in The Australian

Treasury examining new rules limiting negative gearing to two investment properties — The Australian

The Centre for Independent Studies’s Robert Carling expects that removing or reducing negative gearing and/or CGT concessions would reduce investor demand leading to the withdrawal of some investors from the market and a reduction housing supply.
“Owner-occupier demand would not neatly fill the void left by departing investors, as the types of housing favoured by investors and owner-occupiers are not perfectly interchangeable,” Mr Carling said.
He told the CGT inquiry this week that negative gearing along with the CGT discount had become a “whipping boy” for housing affordability debates in Australia but that it was unjustified.
“Since the defeat of the Howard government, along with superannuation concessions and negative gearing, the discount has been a favourite whipping boy,” Mr Carling said.
CIS has suggested that there is a reasonable argument that negative gearing losses should not be a deduction from other regular income such as wages, but from capital gains.
“Cutting the discount is variously seen as a key plan for tax reform, a revenue raising measures the key to lowering house prices and the solution to intergenerational and vertical inequity. And our submission argues that it is none of those things …” Mr Carling said.

Read Robert Carling’s Statement to the Senate Inquiry into the Capital Gains Tax discount.