Hands Off the Family Home: Why This Bizarre Tax Idea Deserves to Die on Arrival
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Hands Off the Family Home: Why This Bizarre Tax Idea Deserves to Die on Arrival
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The ABC this week ran a headline that could have been lifted straight from a satirical website: โTaxing the family home could help more people become homeowners.โ
Two little-known academics have floated the idea that the solution to Australiaโs housing crisis is to tax people for living in their own homes. Not just any tax, mind you, but a levy on the so-called โrental valueโ of owner-occupied housing. In practice, that means imagining you are your own landlord, then paying the government for the privilege.
Absurd? Of course it is. This belongs in the letโs-just-throw-anything-at-the-wall basket, not in the pages of serious policy debate.
The Australian Psyche Will Never Buy It
Home ownership is stitched into the national fabric. It is not merely a financial milestone; it is a symbol of security, independence, and the knowledge that you have โmade itโ through your own effort. Australians work long hours, take fewer holidays, and save for years to scrape together a deposit โ not so they can later be presented with an annual bill for the roof over their heads.
The Australian psyche rejects this sort of thinking outright. You do not โrentโ your own home from the government. You own it because you earned it.
Reward Effort, Do Not Penalise It
We hear endlessly about inequality, โprivilege,โ and the need to โlevel the playing field.โ Fair enough โ nobody wants to see those doing it tough left behind. Somewhere along the way, however, policymakers forgot a basic truth: reward matters.
Australia was built on the ethos that if you turn up for work, put in the hours, save carefully, and pay your taxes, you deserve to enjoy the fruits of your labour. The family home is the clearest embodiment of that ethos. Penalising homeowners for achieving it is not fairness โ it is envy dressed up as economics.
A โHomeownersโ Welfare Stateโ? Please.
The architects of this scheme claim that tax-free home ownership amounts to a โhomeownersโ welfare stateโ that widens inequality. This is an academic parlour trick โ language designed to make everyday Australians sound like freeloaders.
Let us be clear: there is no welfare payment for owning a home. No cheque arrives for mowing your own lawn. No subsidy appears for repainting the spare room. The only โbenefitโ is not paying rent to a stranger โ because you are the landlord.
The Problem Is Not the Homeowner
If these thinkers genuinely cared about affordability, they would go after the real obstacles:
A housing supply throttled by red tape and sluggish approvals.
Tax settings that reward speculative investment over first-home ownership.
Governments addicted to population growth without building enough homes to match.
Instead, they have chosen to target those who did the right thing โ the political equivalent of punching a hole in the lifeboat because some passengers are sitting higher than others.
The Slippery Slope
Make no mistake โ if this idea ever became law, it would not stop at โjust a small levy.โ Governments never give up a revenue stream once they have it. Today it might be 0.5 per cent; tomorrow 1.5 per cent. Before long, people could be selling the homes they have lived in for decades just to meet the tax bill.
A Simple Rule for Policy-Makers
Any โhousing affordabilityโ plan that punishes those who worked, saved, and sacrificed is not a housing plan. It is class warfare masquerading as reform.
Australians will not stand for it. Not in a month of Sundays. Not in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Not ever.
Hands off the family home!