Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The franchising report is going very, very well, in fact. I turn back to why this bill in particular and these schedules are very much part of modernising the Australian tax system and ensure that we provide small business—while the Liberal and National parties may think that this is their constituency, it always seems to me that it is Labor governments who make the hard decisions and make the necessary changes for them—with a more efficient method of taxation, a means by which to reduce red tape and bureaucracy and, in the end, a means through the tax system to ensure that they can get on with their business of providing services and products to the Australian community and economy, rather than being burdened or saddled with masses of legislation. I am sure the two members of the opposition sitting at the table would understand that, given that during their reign of power there was a doubling and tripling of the amount of taxation laws, creating this massive burden and impost on ordinary businesspeople trying to go about their daily work.

In relation to tax benefits and capital gains tax, our amendments under schedule 3 provide a general exemption from capital gains tax for capital gains or capital losses arising from a right or entitlement to a tax offset, deduction or similar benefit. That is pretty important, given the current environment, and adds to the amount of incentives that this government has provided to small-business operators and owners, medium sized enterprises and large businesses to ensure that they can properly deal with the economic circumstances that have been thrust on us by the global financial crisis.

The amendment puts beyond doubt that a capital gain or capital loss would not arise for taxpayers who have a right to receive a tax offset, a deduction or any other tax benefit on the satisfaction of that right. Without going into the great list of incentives, offsets and deductions that we have put in place, this is an important measure to ensure that the tax system works hand-in-hand with the community and hand-in-hand with business operators.

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