At the 2022 election, Labor promised no tax reform beyond multinationals. Here's how that promise is tracking. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
Following Labor's election loss in 2019 when it had campaigned for major structural reforms to the taxation system, the party promised not to revisit such proposals if it won office in 2022.
"The Shadow Cabinet and Caucus have today confirmed that Labor in government will … maintain the existing regimes for negative gearing and capital gains tax," a 2021 press release reads.
In January 2022, then shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers told Brisbane radio presenter Scott Emerson: "We've said for some time Scott, that we wouldn't be taking the same set of tax increases to the next election that we took to the last election. We've made it really clear in areas like negative gearing, and franking credits and the like, that we wouldn't be going down that path."
During the election campaign on April 24, Mr Chalmers ruled out any tax reform outside those already announced relating to multinational companies.
"We have said that we're not proposing any tax reforms beyond the proposals that we will shortly make about multinational tax reform," he told ABC's Insiders program.
Speaking at a National Press Club debate on May 4 he reiterated this promise: "We are only taking to this election one tax reform proposal and that's multinationals."
Assessing the promise
In his pre-election statements, Mr Chalmers committed to no "tax reforms" beyond Labor's multinational tax policy while simultaneously describing the multinational policy as "tax reform" and Labor's "one tax reform proposal".
On this basis, Fact Check considers the promised multinationals tax changes to be an appropriate yardstick for what constitutes tax reform.
These changes were described by Labor's pre-election documents as "modest and responsible measures [that] are expected to raise $1.89 billion over the forward estimates".
For this promise to be delivered, there must be no alterations to Australia's taxation regime beyond the proposed multinationals tax changes. Alternatively, any other changes dealing with taxation must be lesser in magnitude or importance than the multinationals proposal.
Editor's note (June 28, 2024): An earlier version of this article stated that the government's promise would be delivered if there were no "significant alterations" to Australia's taxation regime. The article has been updated to more clearly define Labor's parameters for assessing this promise.
Here's how the promise is tracking: