The calls come as the Government begins to look at a range of options to fix the housing crisis, including removing tax breaks for property investors.
“Without urgent action to lift home building activity, productivity and investment, Australia’s housing crisis will only deepen,” HIA Managing Director, Jocelyn Martin said.
“The Treasurer’s Roundtable presents a critical opportunity to address the barriers that are holding back new housing supply.
“You cannot talk about productivity, economic growth or improving living standards without discussing housing.
“Red tape, regulation and delay are adding enormous costs to the delivery of new homes. If we want to see real reform, we need to boost productivity in our industry, cut the burden of unnecessary building and planning rules, and start making it easier to build the homes.
“HIA made a submission to Treasury, that highlights the taxes and charges on a typical house and land package in Sydney can now exceed $500,000, costs that are ultimately paid by new home buyers and locked into mortgages for decades.
“We’re calling on all level of governments to stop taxing new homes like they’re a luxury item,” Ms Martin said.
“Apart from alcohol and cigarettes, there’s no other sector more heavily taxed than housing.”
Last week, a productivity round table also looked at the impact high taxes were having on lower and middle-income earners.
Economists are calling for the tax burden to be shifted away from wage earners and onto money earned through capital gains.
The e61 chairman, Greg Kaplan, said the inequitable taxation of high-income earners was encouraging people to prioritise generating capital gains through things like property instead of investing in their education and skills to earn higher wages that were being hit at marginal tax rates of up to 47 per cent.
“The absolute worst case that you could be in is to earn all of your income as an employee working for someone else,” Mr Kaplan told the roundtable in Canberra.
“The message that we are sending to our young people is that if you want to be rich, if you want to contribute the most in income to our society, choose a career plan where you can generate capital gains – strive for property development or funds management, not for engineering that matters for productivity.”
