Negative Gearing and the Taxation of Capital Gains in Australia

This paper studies the interaction between negative gearing and three capital gains tax regimes - the current Australian system, the one that prevailed between 1985 and 1999 and a realisation tax that mimics an accruals tax. We report estimates of the effective rates of income tax for each regime in two scenarios - slow anticipated real capital gains and very rapid unanticipated real capital gains. We conclude that negative gearing should be retained and capital gains taxation reformed to approximate an accruals tax. This desirable package would be no harder to administer than the current regime.