Australian Federal Budget 2015/2016: Winners and losers

According to The Australian Financial Review today, the summary of the Australian Federal budget 2015/2016 is as follows:

WINNERS

•Families - extra $3.5 billion in childcare, including $246 million nanny trial

•Small businesses - 1.5 per cent tax cut for small companies and 5 per cent tax discount on income from unincorporated small business activity. Immediate tax writeoff for assets $20,000 or less

•Older workers - $10,000 payments over 12 months to employers hiring over 50s who have been unemployed for six months

•Pharmaceutical buyers – $1.6 billion PBS listing new medicines for melanoma, breast cancer and blindness, offset by $252 million price hike for certain drugs

•Western Australians - one-off $499 million payment to be spent on nine infrastructure projects

•Northern Australians – concessional loan facility of up to $5 billion, to cost the government $800 million over three years

•Poor retirees - 170,000 asset poor retirees to get an average pension increase of $30 per fortnight

•Defence - $403 million over four years to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and 2 per cent pay increase for defence workers

•Reefs - extra $100 million to save the Great Barrier Reef

 
LOSERS

•Wealthy retirees - 326,000 asset rich pensioners to lose part pension benefits

•Families on employer-sponsored parental leave - $1 billion saving from no 'double dipping' into government and employer parental leave

•Welfare recipients -  tightened activity test to weed out people not working, studying or seeking working from receiving childcare benefits

•Welfare recipients – crackdown on welfare and no Family Tax Benefit Part A for families who don't vaccinate their children

•Foreign investors – applications fees on all real estate, business and agricultural foreign investment proposals to raise $735 million over the next four years.

•Multinationals - 30 multinationals to disclose how much they pay on Australian earnings and beefed up enforcement of existing tax laws

•Netflix and overseas service providers - Introduce GST on imported digital products and services to raise $350 million

•FIFO workers – fly-in, fly-out workers to lose beneficial zone tax offset if they do not normally live in remote area

•Working holiday makers – Treated as non-residents and taxed at 32.5 per cent

Ref: http://www.afr.com/news/policy/budget/federal-budget-2015-winners-and-losers-20150512-ggxfta