Scott Morrison‘s budget speech tells us a lot of things about the government’s current state and the government’s plans for the future, but it doesn’t tell us the most important thing about the budget: how does this affect you personally.
That’s where we come in. That’s right: this article can only be read by you alone and we asked all of your family and friends a lot of extremely invasive personal questions to determine your exact financial and employment situation so we can tell you how it will affect only your life. Just kidding, but we did whittle the budget down to the points that are most likely to be relevant to the interests of someone who would click on this article.
Ah shit, me tax
Your taxes are going to go up. In fact, all of our taxes are going to go up (unless you earn less than $21,655). To cover the funding gap for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the Medicare levy is being increased from 2% to 2.5%, starting in 2019.
If you earn $50,000 a year, that’ll mean $250 more on your tax bill. If you earn $75,000 a year, it’ll mean an extra $375. If you earn $100,000 a year – can I borrow ten bucks?
Ah shit, me darts
If you’ve been smoking rollies to skirt around the fact that tailors might just bankrupt you before they kill you, it looks like the jig is up. As of July 1st, the government is going to be steadily bringing the tax on rolling tobacco in line with the tax on cigarettes with a rolling (get it) increase each year for the next four years.
Ah shit, me spit
If you are one of the 5,000 unfortunate people on welfare chosen to be part of the government’s drug testing program, you will be subject to saliva tests to see if you test positive for the use of drugs like ecstasy, weed, and methamphetamines.
If you fail the test, you will be put on a cashless welfare card that will restrict where and how you can spend your money and may even be referred to medical treatment.
Apparently, people will be chosen for the test based on profiling to determine ‘at-risk’ groups, which I assume means looking for people who watch space documentaries on Netflix and order more pizzas than you would expect one person to be able to eat.
Ah shit, me HECS
In a supremely shitty move, a government which is largely composed of university-educated people who got their degrees in a time when it was free to do so are pushing for you to have to pay more for your degrees and sooner.
The specifics haven’t been revealed yet but what we do know is that the government will be decreasing the threshold for when you have to start paying your HECS debt, they’ll also be increasing the rate at which you have to pay it back.
They’ll also be issuing a blanket 2.5% tax increase to universities, but that won’t affect you until the government inevitably deregulates university fees.
Ah shit, me super
In an effort to tackle housing affordability, the government is introducing their extremely ~interesting~ scheme to allow first home buyers to dig into their super to afford a deposit. To encourage this, you’ll be able to voluntarily shunt up to $30,000 of your income (maximum $15,000 a year) into your super, which will be taxed at a lower rate than your regular income.
The government reckons you’ll be able save for a deposit 30% faster than you otherwise would have been able to.
Ah shit, me planet
For the second year in a row, the government didn’t mention a single thing about climate change. Heartening.
Undoubtedly, the budget is going to be torn apart to the tiniest degree over the next few weeks of the news cycle but, for now, this is a picture of your immediate future as it stands and, on the whole, it’s not super thrilling.
Source: 2017-18 budget.
