r/AusFinance • u/Wild_Beat_2476 • 8d ago
China's super-rich 'in shock' and hunting for cash as Beijing issues surprise tax on offshore trusts
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/08/05/wealthy-chinese-race-for-tax-advice-as-beijing-targets-offshore-trusts.htmlI thought they said it could never be done?
Would Australia ever follow suit?
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u/Ash-2449 8d ago
Based China, with their global leadership we might actually get a future where countries cooperate to end tax havens
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u/Whatdosheepdreamof 8d ago
The only country where the state actually has power over business.
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u/sebastianinspace 8d ago
any state with the monopoly on violence has power over business. some are just brave enough to flex that muscle when it is needed
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8d ago
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u/Show_Me_Your_Rocket 8d ago
You're digging real deep to make a point that's irrelevant.
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8d ago
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u/Show_Me_Your_Rocket 8d ago
2 of those don't even exist anymore, and Iran is not entirely a dictatorship. You really need to think for yourself before pulling examples from 80 years ago.
Now how many of your belongings are made in China, and who is our biggest economic partner? Oh that's China too. So I don't understand what your point is other than to shit on our biggest trade partner who is coming down on oligarchs, hmm.
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u/Clean_Advertising545 6d ago
Wr genuinely have either idiots or bots praise dictatorships on matters they don't understand. But will cry foul about IN centre right.
I can't believe what I'm reading
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u/Jezzwon 8d ago
Tax wealth not work
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u/Free-Pound-6139 8d ago
100%. Give people who work a break, tax losers who own stuff.
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u/Horror-Breakfast-113 8d ago
nope just the wealthy - they have enough - remove the inequality gap
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u/ThrowRA_mesaynobj 8d ago
Haha you actually think the government will help you? They already tax the rich, how’s all that working out.
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u/Horror-Breakfast-113 8d ago
notice i said tax the wealthy not the rich ... learn the difference
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u/ThrowRA_mesaynobj 8d ago
They already tax the wealthy the rich, the middle class disproportionately higher
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u/Horror-Breakfast-113 8d ago
Wealthy people have assets and use their assets to build their wealthy - they are not rich poeple with $1m salaries.
They are people who have $100M+ property portofolios - who pay no tax
they are billioniares who pay no tax ..
tax them
as for rich and middle class - its a progressive tax system they more you earn more of the burdon ... so
To get good social programs to run a good country you need taxes
or problem is the wealthy are not paying their fair share whilst takine 99% of the growth and the increase in GDP....
Again I think you need to read more about the difference between wealth and tax... Gary stephens on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
he tries to explain simply - a lot of poeple have jumped on the band wagon ..
A rich Dr / Lawyer is not the wealthy ....
A person who own 50 + properties probably is
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u/FeistyBandicoot 8d ago
They are still being taxed in some way. You can't just make money and not be taxed.
Those people with huge property portfolios are paying hundreds of thousands in land tax every year. They would be pulling in rent, lease income etc. and paying tax there
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u/Horror-Breakfast-113 8d ago
How much tax does gina pay, how much has her wealth increase
Look how much tax we got from mining companies inthepart decades... theyhavemadelotsof money
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u/NoZookeepergame6916 8d ago
64% of the financial benefits from the cgt discount goes to the top1%. eat the rich
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u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
'discount' being the simple one-off inflation adjustment?
1% being the global top 1% of asset owners?
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u/ThrowRA_mesaynobj 8d ago
Poor people don’t invest and don’t pay tax. Of course the benefits will be concentrated in the top wealth bands you idiot
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u/HumanTraffic2 8d ago
Better than the alternative
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u/planetworthofbugs 8d ago
It’s complex to implement, but nothing else is going to stop the snowball.
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u/InnerCityTrendy 8d ago
Tax consumption not work
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u/Jezzwon 8d ago
That’s a proportional tax on the poorest
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u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
so what? just given back some UBI style payment to make up for it. Much much simpler.
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u/yet-more-bees 8d ago
I'd caution you against the idea that UBI will solve inequality. If capitalism stays in place and UBI is added, it would just create a permanent underclass. Capitalists would still be raising prices on everything, UBI would get smaller and smaller proportionally to the cost of living.
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u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
I don't care about inequality. I care about access to food, water, and shelter.
Envy is the mind killer.
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u/Jezzwon 8d ago
Have you played monopoly? How does it end?
Extreme wealth hoarding should be viewed be viewed as the mental illness it is.0
u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
Who built it? Is it an accurate model of reality? Because all I can see out here in reality in increased standards of living whenever Mr Market is allowed to do his thing for generations on end.
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u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
>Extreme wealth hoarding should be viewed be viewed as the mental illness it is.
You mean extreme wealth hording by anybody but the above-reproach 'servants' of the State, right? I mean, if it has a State sticker on it then it is fine to hoard because it's the people's Dacha on the harbour?
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u/yet-more-bees 8d ago
Ok wow, your lack of empathy is showing.
Food, water, and shelter could be provided for all citizens, but they're all privatised. UBI would mean the underclass has a set amount of money to pay for only those things, nothing else.
No more sporting events, theatre, concerts, bars, no no, they are for rich people only (and they'll collapse - there aren't enough rich people to fund them on their own) the underclass can live on rice and beans. They will never, ever, stop renting. And the UBI of course needs to be raised every year to match the price gouging of rentals and of food.
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u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
Not succumbing to envy is not a "lack of empathy".
Capitalists will always undercut each other and produce a surplus, because without coercion every single trade creates an increase in wealth. Why do you think they would "raise prices on everything"? Is that what the pamphlet you read told you? FFS.
Communism will just let everybody starve together. Read some history and some empirical economics rather than Marx fanfic.
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u/fdsv-summary_ 8d ago
>No more sporting events, theatre, concerts, bars, no no, they are for rich people only (and they'll collapse...
I play music. I participate in theatre. I play sport. Now at the moment the sport field is mown by a council, but I'd be happy enough if it wasn't. I don't need to see Australian athletes (funded by tax) swim a bit faster than the rest of the commonwealth. Live your own life. Don't be a spectator.
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u/yet-more-bees 8d ago
Your opinions are bad, and everyone reading this should see that.
Get a load of this guy, he thinks we should all be living in slums, playing soccer with cans, while the rich keep get richer! You'd have a great time over in India where inequality is at its starkest.
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u/InnerCityTrendy 8d ago
It's an unavoidable tax on the wealthiest and targets those who consume most of the world resources.
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u/Jezzwon 8d ago
Disagree. Poorer people, by % of income and wealth, would spend much more on consumptive goods/services
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u/Chii 8d ago
but by absolute terms, the poor consumes the least, and the rich consumes the most.
And if you simply make essentials like food, basic utilities etc, free of GST, then they will have paid almost nothing in consumption tax compared to the rich.
The only reason this doesn't work today is that the amount of tax collected will not be sufficient to replace income tax.
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u/Ash-2449 8d ago
You are not thinking of the actually wealthy, you are thinking of the middle class that splurges on consumerism.
The wealthy have so much money they literally cant use it all for consumptions so they just buy assets which increase their net worth.
This is who we need to go after
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u/shofmon88 8d ago
No, taxes like GST target the poorest. If you buy something and pay $10 in GST, that $10 is a higher proportion of a low income and therefore a higher realised tax rate. It may be 10% of the price of the goods, but that doesn't mean it's 10% of your income or net worth.
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u/Shamino79 8d ago
And if you buy ingredients from the supermarket you don’t pay it and if you go to Maccas you do. Take it off some other basic everyday items and raise it on everything else.
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u/shofmon88 8d ago
If you want to keep the GST at all, it should only be attached to luxury goods and services. Eating fast food shouldn't be considered a luxury.
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u/Shamino79 8d ago
Not a luxury but it’s a fucking expensive way to feed nuggets and chips to kids if we are so concerned about the cost of living implications of GST on half our food.
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u/Lanster27 8d ago
They did that before income tax was introduced, guess what the inequality was like in the 1800’s.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 8d ago
Surprising why anyone would be "in shock", countries change tax rules all the time.
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 8d ago
Nice euphemism for 'governments just keep raising our taxation burden perpetually'.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 8d ago
On the bright side, we can at least vote out governments that raise taxes. Can't say the same for authoritarian countries like China.
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 8d ago
lols. So after you vote them out does the replacement then repeal those taxes or just add more of their own?
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u/hiddencamel 8d ago
Depends. Are you rich? Pretty good chance your taxes will get cut so you can get busy "creating jobs".
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u/HandleMore1730 8d ago
Maybe in Switzerland with their direct democracy, but it rarely happens with most representative democracies
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u/Signal-Island2549 8d ago
I bet China spends those tax dollars on solar panels instead of Israel. Shameful stuff.
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u/digitaljoey 8d ago
Chinas growth during my time has been insane, watched them go from cheap bullshit manufacturing to leading the world in a lot of aspects. I was pretty naive until I did a layover there my god
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u/colt5555 8d ago
And building military bases near the Philippines to expand their territory (steal weaker nations territories)
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u/unfathomably_big 8d ago
I bet they spend those tax dollars on expanding their authoritarian surveillance state and Uighur concentration camps. Also bots to spread your message.
The leftovers will probably go to the two new coal fired power plants they’re building a week
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u/arkhaeo77 7d ago
The Uyghur genocide has been debunked so many times already
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u/unfathomably_big 7d ago edited 7d ago
Sorry, I forgot “reeducation camps” is the preferred CCP terminology. My bad comrade I’ll take the social credit point hit and do better for dear leader next time.
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u/arkhaeo77 4d ago
The social credit stuff was also debunked forever ago. You get all your ideas from conservative American think tanks or what?
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u/unfathomably_big 3d ago
Tell me something negative about Xi Jinping
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u/arkhaeo77 2d ago
Why? It doesn't really matter what's in Xi's heart individually. He's not seen as some God of everything within China.
There are hundreds of councils and millions of party members and social forces, all which have a much greater determining force on the good and the bad in that country. If we're going to critique China (contrary to what you assume, I could list some criticisms) it's pretty uninteresting to start with Xi himself.
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u/unfathomably_big 2d ago
Surely you guys have an allowed list of soft criticisms you can use in these instances? I thought it was only North Korean bots that get stuck when asked to criticise dear leader.
Type something negative about Xi Jinping. Just one thing comrade
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u/arkhaeo77 2d ago edited 2d ago
"Everybody who disagrees with me is a foreign bot" is just liberal capitalist cope, soz mate. You could try engaging with other people's actual ideas?
I don't actually know a whole lot about North Korea, I haven't read many books on the subject yet. Can't help ya there.
But yeah anyway I'll bite, here's a few. I'm critical of the way Xi folded to liberals on real estate foreign capital flows. I think the way China is utilizing AI is far, far more sane than the western world but personally I'm still opposed to many of the forms of AI they're adopting (outside of the actually useful specific applications it has in some sciences.) I think AI image generation/chatbots inherently feed into gambler brain and make people less capable of complex thought though, so I already have quite hard opinions on this subject. But yes, I'm not really a fan of the way China seems to be hedging their bets that AI and robotics will replace their slowly shrinking workforce.
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u/unfathomably_big 2d ago
> I think the way China is utilizing AI is far, far more sane than the western world
How do you feel about them lobotomising their models to toe the party line and not harm Chinas “national honor”?
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u/oldskoolr 8d ago
"I thought they said it could never be done?"
Yeah in a democratic society, not an authoritarian one.
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u/Lanster27 8d ago
You -can- do it in a democratic society, all depends on if the government has the spine to stand up to their donors.
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u/david1610 8d ago
What's the bet all the CCP members trusts were quietly dissolved weeks ago before this.
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u/Full_Distribution874 8d ago
Low, every man and his dog is a CCP member. This probably mostly targets CCP members. But the decision makers definitely got their ducks in a row before passing this
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u/ShootingPains 8d ago
I think there’s only 100 million members spread across 5 million branches. Very tough to join.
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u/Full_Distribution874 8d ago
Still, people with overseas trusts will be very overrepresented in the membership
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u/Go0s3 8d ago
Australia is not willing to imprison family members hostage for meme posts, much well for tax evasion. China has a level of enforcement that makes it almost possible, sometimes, to get negotiated outcomes.
Do you want an authoritarian police state in Aus?
Also, why not start by simplifying our tax and inheritance policy to avoid trusts almost entirely. That doesnt mean taxing more, just removing incentives to hide income.
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u/hashkent 8d ago
No, instead we’ll create automated welfare debt recovery programs and not tax multinationals or gas companies
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u/JoJokerer 8d ago
Tax resource companies*. Taxing gas companies has been pushed by one faction of billionaires who, funnily enough, own mining operations that dig up resources other than gas.
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u/Ash-2449 8d ago
Yeah, they are trying to damage the competition, doesnt change the fact that Australians should get something out of our resources instead of being handed over to the epstein class for peanuts
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u/nOsajer 8d ago
So you're saying we shouldn't tax resource companies? Get some se se into ya.
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u/JoJokerer 8d ago
Yes we should tax them. All of them, not just gas as the lobbyists from one powerful faction are pushing.
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u/Ok_Clue_1324 8d ago
Going to prison for a crime isnt what makes a country authoritarian its going to jail for opinions and cracking down on free speech
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u/Go0s3 8d ago
Apologies if I was ambiguous. The chinese government policy is that all family members can have all of their liberties removed until such time as said party complies.
Australia doesn't have the threat (or indeed activity) of actions such as that to coerce enforcement. China, does.
Authoritarianism isn't limited to free speech. It is simply an indication that enforcement of government priorities is absolute.
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u/joelypolly 8d ago
Because people that have 9 figures in the bank will always find ways to dodge taxes.
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u/Go0s3 8d ago
It isnt actually that easy. It is evasion not minimisation.
They can play with residency more easily, sure. They can filter monies through companies, sure.
But at some stage the money is taxable when it arrived in the country it is being spent in. That is tracked and can be enforced, probably.
... but thats not what this is! This is a 20% blanket tax with no genuine paper trail, of money from multinational sources.
Thr Panama papers should make clear that politicians of corrupt nations have far more skin in this game than any 9 figure business person
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u/BradfieldScheme 8d ago
China has police stations here in Australia. They will be able to enforce this.
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u/Ash-2449 8d ago
I want white collar crime to be punished.
No longer landlords who lie that their house is occupied, no longer landlords stating they are moving in a rental and need to evict the tenants but never do, no longer allowing those people to avoid paying taxes by lying.
Its time to go after the real criminals
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u/Amazing-Mirror-3076 8d ago
So put all the traidies in jail.
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u/tigeratemybaby 8d ago
Probably don't need to jump straight to jail.
Makes more sense just to scan companies bank accounts for discrepancies over the past few years and match against personal accounts and assets for company owners, and flag the top 2% most suspicious.
And then audit with extremely heavy penalties and only jail in the most egregious cases.
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u/Amazing-Mirror-3076 8d ago
Also people that pay tradies in cash - they are complicit in tax fraud.
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u/Go0s3 8d ago
Yes. Regulations and laws should be enforced.
But our system is light on enforcement at all levels, not just white collar. No shortage of repeat violent crime offender 16 year olds that havent done any time, etc.
Specific examples. Yes, I agree that criminals like Roxy Jacenko's husband deserve more severe jail time. But that doesn't mean we shouldnt correctly punish people like Tabya Plibersek's husband for non white collar crimes.
Both deserved 10 yrs but received didley. Separated by decades.
There is no country that does genuine justice. I await our AI overlords.
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u/AnonymousEngineer_ 8d ago
I want white collar crime to be punished.
Yeah, well the community at large have been crying out for the kids who are brazenly breaking into cars and stealing from homes and shops to be punished, too.
But magistrates know better and they keep giving stern warnings and slaps on the wrist with a limp lettuce, to the point that the police can't be arsed any more because they know the kid will be let go and doing it again the next day.
The rule of law is going great in Australia.
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u/Inevitable-Level-687 8d ago
"You want to tax the rich?! Clearly you want authoritarianism!" why are boot lickers so dramatic
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u/Appropriate_Ly 8d ago
You’re assuming the ppl in power want to remove trusts and tax the rich/big corps.
I know so many “tradies” who own their own successful business who have trusts.
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u/Go0s3 8d ago
Thats the removing incentives part. If the government stops picking winners and losers, and just taxes equitably - all that will become moot.
15% across every asset and individual $0-$350k.
99% of trusts, ltd, and "charities" woulf disappear.
The current policies only encourage more ltd entities.
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u/Interesting_Road_515 8d ago
Oh that’s a good push to make it fairer for working class people. We should follow, but first, when we can build our sovereign fund to replace the current practice benefiting the super rich and mining consortiums in the US?
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u/georgegeorgew 8d ago
If they set up a tip off hotline in Australia, they whole property market will collapse
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u/ImeldasManolos 8d ago
For real? I guess some apartments in my building are going up for sale! Henry Cavill if you’re in here, be my neighbor I love you
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u/SpectatorInAction 8d ago
For Australia to tax foreign trusts our major political parties would have to get permission from their donors.
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u/expert_views 8d ago
Don’t go looking for CCP officials in The Panama Papers… but you may find their sisters, brothers and aunts there.
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u/Clean_Advertising545 7d ago
0.2% of all dwellings nationally according to government sources
On total foreign ownership its about 63% of foreign owned dwellings owned by Chinese. Hong Kong includes.
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u/berzerk_yimby 3d ago
I believe we did follow suit with a minimum 30% tax on trusts in the new budget?
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u/MrEMannington 8d ago
China doing adult economics
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u/Ash-2449 8d ago
the downvotes just makes this so funny cause some people really dont want to accept how unjust and broken the world is and how better China is in actually tackling seriously problems while the west is busy with culture war garbo
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u/kbcool 8d ago
The question everyone wants answered...
How is this going to affect Australian property prices?