Dear Prime Minister,
We, the undersigned, are the people the budget says it wants to back. We are young Australians under the age of 40 who are doing our best to build a successful Australian business.
We work the hours. We carry the risk.
We do it because we believe in the business we are building, and because we have been told, repeatedly, that this spirit of having a crack is exactly what the country needs.
Unfortunately, the Budget your government just announced tells us a very different story.
Rather than back us, you have ambushed us with a massive tax increase, a tax that will hit us, the Australians we hire, and the investors who believe in us, the hardest.
The consequence isn’t a budget that helps young people get ahead; it’s a budget that will ensure that young business builders, people like us, are much more likely to get left behind.
By removing the CGT discount on shares, and replacing it with a cost base indexation scheme, you have clocked us with a massive tax hit and then come up with a replacement that will make things even worse.
This aspiration ambush doesn’t just impact tech startups either, it impacts every growing business in Australia. Meaning every small business that wants to become a medium-sized business and every medium-sized business that wants to become a big business. These are the business builders that have just been hit for a six by a tax change dropped on us out of the blue.
Many of the young business builders who have signed this letter support the measures in the budget that make it easier for young Australians to buy a house, including removing the CGT discount on the sale of residential investment properties.
But the changes to the CGT discount on shares will do nothing to make houses more affordable; all they will achieve is to suck the ambition, drive and hope out of the hearts of young business builders nationwide.
Surely that can't be the plan?
Between us, we are building new businesses across digital innovation, retail, and manufacturing. We are the exact small-to-medium enterprises trying to scale into the major employers of tomorrow.
We are signing as ourselves. We invite every other young business builder in the country to sign with us. Prime Minister, we respectfully look forward to your reply.
Signed,
The undersigned — young business builders of Australia
The 45 signatories:
- Frank Greeff — Kinso, Co-Founder
- Jason Andrew — Arbor Group, Managing Director
- Dr. Ric Porteous — Goodwork.ai, Head of Generative AI and Technology
- Damien Fitzpatrick — Pillar Performance, Founder
- Adrian Osman — me&u, Co-founder & COO
- Kim Teo — me&u, Co-founder & CEO
- Adam Hewitt — Cyber Revolution, Co-founder & CEO
- Joe Harris — Alloy Robotics, CEO
- Will Ashford — TrueState, Founder & CEO
- James Frankel — PropWiz, Founder & CEO
- James Gabb — Sauce, Founder & Co-CEO
- Dr William Crowe — HEO, Co-founder & CEO
- Hiranya "HJ" Jayakody — HEO, Co-founder & CTO
- Tom Hawley — Azura Financial, Director
- Alex Bergsaaker — Goodwork.ai, Head of Retail AI and Data
- Nick Kamper — Purpose Bureau, CEO
- Giorgia Rossi — Possum Play, Co-Founder
- Renee Cizel — Possum Play, Co-Founder
- Alex Zaccaria — Linktree, Co-founder & CEO
- Alistair Blenkin — ProcurePro, Co-founder & CEO
- Jacky Wong — CIM Build, Co-founder & CIO
- Kevin Le — Build, Co-founder & CIO
- Shane Brunette — Summ, Co-founder & CEO
- Maxine Minter — Co Ventures, Founder
- Jack Watts — Bastion, Founder
- Alex Debney — Early Bird, Founder
- Brad Joffe — Apate.ai, Co-Founder
- Anna O'Connor — Sound Slam, Co-Founder
- Lucy Campbell — Sound Slam, Co-founder
- Lauren Perrett — BubbaDesk, Founder
- Sarah Warmoll — The Careers Department, Co-founder & COO
- Samantha Devlin — The Careers Department, Co-founder & CEO
- Georgia Vidler — Human, Co-founder
- Marc Hermann — Everlab, Co-founder
- Sam Kothari — Everlab, Co-founder
- Matt Hinds — Sauce, Founder & Co-CEO
- Alan Nguyen — Boringstack, Founder
- Mona Chiha — JurisTechne, Founder & CEO
- Justin Teo — Boringstack, Founder
- Sachin Shah — Kindling, Co-founder
- Nathan Wang — Edexia, Co-founder
- Daniel Gibbon — Edexia, Co-founder
- Brendan Banfield — Gridsight, Co-founder & CEO
- Kurt Walkom — Gridsight, Co-founder & CCO
- Hugh Chan — Gridsight, Co-founder & Head of Product & Technology