Written

For

The

Australian

-

Budget

hits

middle

Australia’s

wealth,

not

just

the

rich

Did you vote for a 30 per cent minimum tax on your family trust? Neither did I. Yet here we are, picking through a budget that came wrapped in the language of "fairness" but is quietly reaching deep into the pockets of middle Australia.

Let's be honest about who actually uses discretionary family trusts. It's not just billionaires sipping champagne on superyachts. It's the local butcher, the plumber down the road, the pharmacist on the corner. These structures are about asset protection, succession planning and managing risk in a small business. Slapping a flat 30 per cent tax on distributions treats every beneficiary, whether a university student or a part-time working spouse, as if they're earning $200,000. That's not fairness. That's a fiction.

And the double-taxation issue with bucket companies is genuinely alarming. By the time profits flow through the trust, into the company, and out as a dividend, the effective tax rate can hit 63 per cent. That violates a principle of taxation that has stood since Roman times: you tax income once.

Then there's the CGT overhaul. Investors will need formal valuations as at 1 July 2027 — except Australia has roughly 3,000 valuers and over 5.5 million assets that may need valuing. Do the maths. The only guaranteed winners I can see here are the valuers themselves.

The cruellest irony is that this is sold as helping young Australians into property. But the 25-year-old using Help to Buy today will, in 20 years, find none of the wealth-building tools their parents had: no negative gearing, no 50 per cent CGT discount, and a 30 per cent minimum CGT rate waiting for them.

What worries me most is the precedent. Division 296 targeted the top end. This budget makes it clear that anything is now on the table — and none of it was taken to the last election.