Jerry_Atrick

I know the collectibles CGT wasn't introduced by Albo et al, howeve, Labior did introduce CGT in 1985 as a more equitable tax. At the same time, it did reduce income and some corporate taxes. However,the reforms were only at the top marginal tax rate so, with the exception of bracket creep, don't impact too many Aussies. Yet the thresholds for the tax to apply haven't changed since 1985. And even then, for the average punter - even a hobbyist. There is no threshold for a reasonable turnover as a hobby (i.e. selling off say one stamp to fund the purchase of another). AAlso not being able to offset against losses of othe CGT assessable asset classes is also pernicious. The cultural comment was aimed at the Aussie governments as a whole. Not just Albo... Not indexing thresholds, for example, is a cultural thing,. It is niot necessarily the coal face workers I am talking about. Is the CGT a stealth death tax? Yes.. In Australia, you don't pay inheritance tax on receiving the property, but when yu sell it. Many people sell the property (or want to).. so you have to pay the tax. It effectively defers the inheritance tax payable. It is better than the UK though, where death taxes are payable on property recived > GBP 250K per person and the taxes payablke on inherited pensions can be up to an effective 80%. I am setting up our property (which is diminished with this house) such that it is owned by an Aussie company,, and the kids can derive rental income so as not to ave to sell it. They can then use the equity to fund hopefukly fund further investment/growth.It is about the most tax efficient way of doing it..

Well, I hope we make a lot of money from it and they are building us an effective iron dome

I neglected to include the difficulty of enforcement (train/phone at the time), but if when you sell someone wants a receipt, you are going to be, if only slightly, a little more at risk because the next bloke nay get audited and he produces a receipt from you. Granted, the risk is tiny, but regardless $500 for a single item that doesn't have an exemption for, say not having up to a reasonable amount of the type of collectable for normal use whether you can prove it is for normal use or not is scummy and shows they may be prepared to use it against the little people when there are far bigger fish to fry. It's about a culture as opposed to the probability of enforcement... IMHO

Farq.. I agree with PM.. it will bring a lot of ordinary people into the net. $500 is not a lot these days and unless you can prove what you have bought is used on a frequent basis, it will be classed as a collectible and if you sell it as yiu don't use it anymore and you make a profit, you pay. But if you make a loss, you can only offset that loss against other gains on collectibles you sell within the tax year.. not even other CGT payable assets let alone your total assemble tax. This is what I call pernicious tax... And Google tells me thar the official rate of inflation isn't taken into account, but some formula applied by the ATO, which is usually lower than the inflation rate. This is what I call a pernicious tax or a money grab. There is a carve out for personal use, but you have to prove it and it cant be occasional; it has to be frequent.. In theory, that jewellery necklace bought for wearing on the wedding day and only dragged out for special occasions will he caught.. so yeah, it will affect a lot of ordinary people.

As there is a thread about Chump already, how about we make this about the "average American". Firstly, what is the "average American"? Or do we mean the stereotypical middle class American - and even this is hard to define as their preferences and attitudes can vary differently between states. But how does this correlate to their rise in economic and political power? And concentration of that economic and political power. Don't forget, the US economy was originally built on some of the most oppressive largesse compared to its peers - slavery, suppression of workers rights, etc. Even today, not a rise since 2009 of the minimum wage.. very little leave entitlements, virtually no redundancy rights, etc. at least compared to its peers. And let's not forget, the leader in a democracy, of which it still was in 2025 when Chump was elected, is the result of a majority of votes or seats or states or whatever, in accordance with the electoral laws and systems. In this case, in 2025, Chump was able to attract the popular majority of voters as well as states. Yep, I feel sorry for the Democrat voters, and for America not having what it considered a better option. But ultimately, they knew what he was going to do, knew he would do it and some cited that is why they voted for him. As a result, I don't feel so sorry for the Americans.. they made theiur bed (if not all of them - but that is how it works). In fact, I could argue the current administration doesn't break with their historical past, particularly with respect to avarice. I do feel sorry for the rest of the world (or at least the US allies) that bought into the US, had no say, and now have to deal with the fallout.

On the basis that current aged voters would die out, yes. But it ignores two other things. First, and less likely, the new found popularity of one nation will result in those offspring and impressionable of those new found voters being conditioned into following... Of course, most of the new found voters probably have adult kds where it is too late (hence, less likely). But, as we age, our ideology tends to change - usually moderate more than flip.. But there are enough people on the boundaries that may keep PHON in popularity or even increase it (assuming every other factor stays the same). I just mentioned it as a possible outcome, but if UK experience is anything to go by - and indeed US experience - the electorate may well have had enough that something really bad has to happen before they change their tune. On any other electoral system, Farage and UK Reform would possibly be the second or likely third party in the UK House of Commons today - straight past the post averted that. Chump is in because of the protest vote - the die-hard MAGA base is not enough to give them more than a few states (yes, Chump is Republican, but lets face it, their national elections are usually based on the presidential candidates). Pauline#s rise is not dissimilar to Farage's.. disenfranchised population, structural unfairness, immigration concerns, etc. And now, a rise in the polls; the difference is Reform are now polling ahead of anyone else. Both parties have the same issues - candidate vetting is terrible, controlled by billionaires and open about it, offering cheap solutions to difficult problems, etc. It is likely, unless Labour in the UK turn things around quickly, Reform will be the next government (Conservatives are in the same position as the Libs). Then the shit will hit the fan and as the British are less rusted on, Reform will hopefully implode before they can do too much damage, or will at least be booted out and we will never hear of them or their people again. Although Albo is far less unpopular than Starmer, it is plausible that without Labor turning it around, Pauline could make a decent go of it at the next election.. definitely not a majority, but with preferential voting, you may well see quite a few One Nation taken seats in the House of Reps. That would give her enough to make a dent, but not enough to extend them the rope to hang themselves (metaphorically to those sensitive to Pauline). If Labor continue, then as long as ON don't royally screw up, they could be in for a treat in 2031. It is not that far away (and assuming no early elections called). At the polls stand today, they look to be the majority party on a "two-party" preferred basis, where if one substituted them for the Libs/Nats in that race. As it is, they are polling well ahead of the Lib/Nats. Once they are in, if they are, like Reform, they would likely screw everything up and we will never hear of them again. So, while I agree, they are a fringe riding a wave of discontent, there is a more than tight probability they will become a major at the next election and the libs will pay for it. Agreed. this is the major reason for voter discontent; it's just the billionaires are great at getting a manipulated message out to the population it is identity politics (pick whatever you like) that is the problem. She had so many "I don't do policy on the run" responses to basic policy questions - I would put her more like Joe BP - "Don't you worry about that!"

Whoa.. There were a few spicy pages I just caught up on. 🙂 I think it is fair to say the two party system is in transition. To what - who knows? I will leave the performance of Albo and his crew to the appropriate thread. However, it is clear that there is a perception that neither of the two majors are truly representing the majority of Aussies at the moment. And, from the polls, it is clear the libs at least (and possibly the Nats) aren't thought to be at all representing their traditional base. Labor, at least federally, seem to be not too far off their normal primary vote; I read it was somewhere around the 28% mark; not too much lower than the last federal election of, from memory, about 32%. At the same time, there is a perception (real or otherwise) that the gap is ever widening between the haves and have nots and that blame is being successfully laid at the feet immigration, which plays into both fear and bigotry. This is because more and more of what was the middle class is being squeezed more and more. For various reasons, which would take a book to go through, blame has successfully been laid at the feet of immigration. This results in a perception the immigrants are taking away previous little resources that the majority of the population have to fight for, and along comes Pauline with her silver bullet fixes to everyone's problems. The Libs had their time and between Morrison and Dutton (with a little Littleproud thrown in), screwed things up so royally, they were booted out (Albo technically won, but in the famous words of Bill Hayden - a drover's dog would have won that election). To his credit, he took an early lump in the form of the Voice, licked his wounds, and then did a reasonable job. But hubris seems to be setting in (early) as it inevitably does, and he is no longer looking like he is really looking after the majority of the people he purports to represent. Having said that, the loss of primary vote is probably not much more than a protest vote - yet. The Libs seem to be so far removed from reality, that all but their most ardent supporters seem to have jumped ship. It's hard to understand precisely what they stand for. If I was a betting person, I would suggest in 5 - 10 years, without a complete about-face, they will fade into oblivion. Which may leave a two party system - Labor and Phon.. Or more likely, some other party will spring up as the Greens seem to be marginalising themselves (or at least no one is covering them much anymore). Or there may be more parties, in which case it is likely to become lie some European countries where coalitions are formed and broken. Whilst I support the key budget changes on economic grounds, there is a lot more that can be done. And, people like David Pocock are using social media effectively to get a message across of what is wrong with Labor and the LNP. Just google or youtube him and you will see what I mean.

Don't worry, Marty; I can still input some Jerry-isms...

Thanks, Chaps.. Just saw this thread.. Been terribly busy at work.. Still am, but took a couple of days off while the missus and daughter go to London for some culture. And for some reason, they browser spell checker is working again! Back to it on Tuesday, but have a lot of personal stuff to catch up on.

I did.. but this house is taking a bloody long time and draining more funds than we imagined. , so every so often we have to pause to let them build up. Unf, this year, I made a bit of a blue of a decision because I was too busy at work to think things through and that cost be £25K as well.. So that has to be made up, too. But this week, things are back on, and it is some rewiring and all the decorative work.. If I don't sell the lot, I will subdivide, where I can sell the cottage to pay off the mortgage and then rent out the main house.

Mmmmm.. Cheese... Will be sampling the local stuff while out in Aus... It has some competition.

https://anotherconcept.co.uk/insights/ai-overviews-are-affecting-paid-search Indeed - it is worrying.. As AI just does harvest info, with less website content that will inevitably flow, bias is likely to creep into the answers it gives. Hmm... That is odd. The browser should pass everything in the address bar to the server in the URL and provide a valid server response. If you are adding -AI in the google search and not the address bar, the browser should pass it as well formed in the context of a POST or GET request parameter (I don't know off the top of my head which Google uses). It's not just Australia - it is all foreign countries.. And i have a feeling it is to try and strangle Anthropic as they have come into conflict with Chump. On the question of data centre and power usage, AI wil just going to get bigger. But, I have a feeling that while the AI consumption will surge and there will be an overall surge in consumption, as AI displaces workers, the total level of consumption will normalise lower. Firstly, you won't require as many commercial buildings to be lit up, or the IT servers to just maintain the desktop infrastructure, nor all the PCs, etc. Ironially, in the information age, most of the information workers will be put out of work, and that will alleviate the electricity demand heavily (well, maybe except for summer months, when a/c is switched on in the houses). It is not just the building and the desktop infrastructure - we will probably not need as many trams and trains running unless people replace their cars with public transport. Having said that, of course, EV takeup is higher so that may change things, but then again, solar and other localised renewables will take up some of the load. Secondly, enterprise server power consumption will be lower, too. This is because although companies will all need accounting systems, etc, everyone is moving this to the same data centres as AI (i.e. "the cloud"), and therefore, these servers will also house such systems, rather than separate servers, and their marginal use of electricity compared to stand alone use of electricity will be a lot lower. I have heard (not researched - so pls take this with a grain of salt) that SpaceX is looking to develop satellite based data centres - solar power is supposedly easily harnessed and using their satellites for networking, will be offering this as an alternative. However, I can't help but think of nefarious state actors tracking them and right at their most opportune moment, destroying them - something I am sure SpaceX engineers are thinking about. All AI models rely on being "trained" and machine learning. This is basically reading data - and lots of it - the more it consumes, the more statistically (not necessarily in reality) accurate it becomes. For example, if AI was around in 300 BC and it was trained in earth science data at the time, it would statistically deduce that the earth is flat and everything revolved around the earth. That would have been statistically valid, though inaccurate. Also, AI won't have been trained on everything and there just simply may not be the data available to be accurate. AI generally uses machine learning, which is an advanced probability calculation described by Bayes theorem (usually) across a lot of data. So, if the data is wrong, so is AI. But, that is the same for real intelligence, too. What the AI model does if it doesn't have much data on something, is go to the web. I would imagine it can't possibly eek out every tidbit of information, so it probably has some weighting algorithm to determine the most likely accurate sites to rely on. Whilst it doesn't get it right, it at least, in these cases, quotes its sources for you to check, which is a good thing.

I am travelling to Aus for a couple of weeks - up to a month in mid-July. I am guessing that will become a gripe for you fellas 🙂 It's not the flight, nor the destination, but the purpose. what I call YAMD - yet another mercy dash. At least this time, it is not for a couple of days. I will be between my brother's place in Canterbury and my mother's place in the Yarra Valley - as well as Port Arlington, where my brother has his retirement place. Sadly, my mum has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and I am coming out for the prognosis scan. Then it will be making arrangements after that. Also, both my brother and I want to get her wishes, because, the feeling when my father was in ICU being asked by the doc to play dog was not a good one. And that time will come, so I want us to be prepared - as I have prepared my family for my inevitable demise. All good things must come to an end, unf. But, it will be a recce trip as well, so not all gripes. I will take a look at a parcel of land I intend to build my "retirement" lifestyle on - and yes - it will be GA/RAAA based. In addition, I will try to nip up to Sydney to introduce myself to our Aussie office and see if there may be any offerings in the future move - which is not far, now - end of year max - will explain in the reno thread. I won't have time to do any flying, plus I don't have an Aussie medical at the moment (couldn't get a mygov id in time for my last medical here.).

My intention is to stay off the stuff completely until the end of September. At the moment, I am planning to return after that - no more than once a month but good wines rather than the table stuff at the moment.. Only with dinner. Which is a pain as I am going to be landing in Melbourne in mid-July, between Canterbury and the Yarra Valley for a couple of weeks.

Especially sweet since I thiink it was the Turkish coach stated they have a more talented side. I may even watch the highlights (I am not terribly impressed with FIFA, so am not watching the games generally).