I am a property valuer, so perhaps I shouldn’t be complaining about the latest round of tax reform. Professionally, I should probably be celebrating it.
The capital gains tax (CGT) changes commencing 1 July 2027 potentially create an enormous amount of work for my profession. Australia has millions of investment properties and only around 6,000 certified practising valuers.
From a business perspective, more valuation work is good news, but as an Australian and a small business owner, I find myself asking different questions.
Why does tax reform so often require more people, more reports, more administration and more cost?
For affected property owners, establishing a value at 1 July 2027 may mean engaging a valuer, retaining evidence, consulting your accountant and potentially obtaining additional tax advice.
I may benefit from that, but ultimately somebody has to pay for it.
Multiply those professional fees and administrative hours across Australia’s investment-property market and the compliance cost is massive. The tax is one cost; complying with the tax is another.
I see the same problem in housing construction.
Before a shovel goes into the ground, a development can involve planners, engineers, surveyors, traffic consultants, environmental consultants, heritage consultants, energy consultants, lawyers and architects.
These professions perform important roles. The problem isn’t necessarily any one requirement; it is their cumulative effect.
Every report costs money. Every referral takes time. Every delay means more interest payments. Eventually those costs end up in the price of the finished house.
We talk constantly about housing affordability and increasing supply while simultaneously making housing construction more complicated and expensive.
What about the cost of government itself?
Australia had almost 2.6 million public-sector employees in June 2025. In just one year, that number increased by 3.3 per cent.
The cost is equally striking. Public-sector cash wages and salaries reached almost $250bn in 2024–25, increasing 7.6 per cent in a single year.
In Victoria alone, there were approximately 617,000 Commonwealth, state and local government public-sector jobs, with annual wages of $57bn. Those numbers include teachers, nurses, police, emergency workers and many other people delivering essential services.
My concern isn’t with those roles; it is with the cost of over-governance. At every government level – federal, state and council – we have a layer of departments, agencies, regulators and bureaucrats creating and administering rules.
Business operates underneath all three levels, with every additional requirement meaning more time and money expended by business operators.
There is a huge circular economy developing.
Government creates regulation. Government employs people to administer it. Business must then employ people internally and engage advisors externally to comply with the regulations.
Everyone becomes busier – but are we actually becoming more productive? It is actually counterproductive – owners have less money to invest in improving their core business activities.
The ATO has announced it will stop accepting credit card payments after 30 November 2026.
There may be administrative reasons for that decision, but I run a business and understand cash flow.
For many small businesses, a credit card isn’t about avoiding an obligation, it can simply provide flexibility between when money comes in and when bills need to be paid.
If someone owes the ATO money and wants to pay it, why make that harder? Removing choices doesn’t feel much like reform.
Can we put a price on bureaucracy? Perhaps every significant new tax or regulation should come with three numbers: How much will it raise? How much will government spend administering it? And how much will Australians spend complying with it?
That last number is the one I want to see. Accountants, lawyers, valuers, consultants, compliance reports, software, record keeping and countless hours of administration all have a cost.
I’m not arguing against taxation, government or sensible regulation. I’m asking whether we have confused complexity with reform.
Good reform should simplify the system, reduce duplication and make obligations easier to understand.
As a valuer, the CGT changes may be good for my industry, but creating more work for people like me doesn’t mean we have created a better system for everyone else.
Gareth Kent
Director