Voters warm to negative gearing changes – but like Coalition’s policy more

Australians are open to some of the leading options to overhaul negative gearing and scale back billions of dollars in tax benefits on investment properties, but only a small minority want to scrap the concessions entirely.

An exclusive survey reveals that 46 per cent of voters favour reforms to limit the value or number of claims people can make for their investment properties, highlighting the way the contentious ideas could shape the federal election.

As federal officials explore the options to amend the tax breaks, the survey finds that only 17 per cent of voters want to keep negative gearing without any changes and only 15 per cent want to stop it entirely.

The findings in the Resolve Political Monitor, conducted exclusively for this masthead by research company Resolve Strategic, show that Australians are divided on the best ways to respond to the housing crisis amid a fierce political debate on the tax breaks.

There is a narrow majority of 52 per cent, however, for the Coalition’s key housing policy, letting first-home buyers draw on their superannuation for a $50,000 deposit on a property.

Only 39 per cent of voters favour the idea of using federal funds to help people buy their first homes in return for the government taking equity in the homes, the approach the government is taking with its Help to Buy policy.

Resolve director Jim Reed said the findings showed that many voters favoured reform but that the risk for the government was significant if it took bold proposals to the election.

“Voters aren’t necessarily averse to changes in housing taxes, but they do carry risk because people tend to focus on the pain rather than the indirect, longer-term outcomes,” he said.

“Some have equated a bold change on negative gearing or capital gains to the reset that John Howard got when he took the GST to the 1998 election. But you’ve got to remember that he lost 14 seats, and Labor can’t afford that.”

The Resolve Political Monitor surveyed 1606 people from October 1 to 5, producing results with a margin of error of 2.4 per cent. It found Labor and the Coalition were neck-and-neck in two-party terms, heightening the prospect of a tight election and a hung parliament.

Voters are open to changes to negative gearing but split on form what that change should take.Credit:

The latest findings confirmed months of results showing Opposition Leader Peter Dutton holds a lead over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on housing policy. Asked to name the party and leader they thought were best to manage the policy, 29 per cent named Dutton and the Coalition while 23 per cent named Albanese and Labor.

When respondents were asked to name the two greatest cost-of-living pressures in their lives, 20 per cent said the cost of buying a home and 21 per cent said the cost of renting a home. The biggest single issue was the cost of groceries, named by 59 per cent.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has tried to increase pressure on Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather to back the government’s Help to Buy bill, an issue the government sees as an early election trigger if the Senate continues to stop the scheme going ahead.

With the housing debate growing increasingly rancorous, the latest Resolve Political Monitor added further questions to explore whether voters might support this and other housing measures.

Only 17 per cent of voters wanted to keep negative gearing without any changes, but only 15 per cent wanted to stop it entirely.

Almost half of all the respondents backed the options to modify negative gearing, with 30 per cent in favour of capping the number of properties and another 16 per cent preferring to scale back the value of the tax claims.

While this meant that 63 per cent were in favour of keeping negative gearing in some way – in its current form or by reducing the benefits – it also meant that 61 per cent favoured changing it in some way – either by scrapping it or reducing the benefits.

The Resolve Political Monitor also repeated a broader question about negative gearing and the separate concession that gives people a 50 per cent discount on capital gains tax when they sell their investment properties.

The survey found 43 per cent support for reducing negative gearing, the same as the result on the same question in February 2023, but down from 48 per cent in October 2022.

On capital gains tax, the latest survey found 44 per cent in favour of reducing the concession on investment properties or other assets such as share portfolios, up from 40 per cent on the same question in February 2023 and October 2022.

“When we give people more information about what negative gearing is, there is greater support for change,” Reed said.

“This tells us people could be persuaded on change, but it would take a lot of effort over the next few months to prosecute that case given its complexity and the danger of attack.”

“It’s worth noting that only around a fifth of those currently renting, wanting to buy soon or considering themselves priced out of the market, want negative gearing stopped entirely. There could be a variety of reasons for this, including that they see rents going up or that they are aspirational for the long-term.”

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