Why budget rhetoric won’t match reality for many younger Australians

Figures show the treasurer’s reforms will make the tax system fairer but some will not have the advantages enjoyed by their parents

As Jim Chalmers was doing the round of the parliamentary press gallery on Tuesday, he was encouraging journalists to see the tax reforms in the budget as the most ambitious since the turn of the century.

The core of the tax package is that instead of paying tax on just half of profits on the sale of investments held for more than a year, we will return to the pre-1999 version where investors would get a discount based on inflation.