Chalmers eyes high super balances for tax increase amid revenue slump

Jim Chalmers is eyeing a crack down on super concessions after revealing they were tipped to cost Commonwealth coffers $55bn this financial year.

The federal Treasurer on Tuesday released the Tax Expenditures and Insights State­ment detailing 48 tax concessions it was reviewing.

Concessions on super was top of the pack.

Amid higher public spending, driven partly by increased demand for public services, and a revenue slump on the back of plummeting mineral earnings, the government has been scrambling to find ways to plug fiscal holes.

Speaking to press in Canberra after the statement was released, Mr Chalmers acknowledged growing demand for government services was weighing on federal budgets, but said Australians “are right to expect a decent level of services”.

“Whether it’s aged care, Medicare, early childhood education, the care economy more broadly, this is going to become an increasingly important part of our economy as our population ages in particular,” he told reporters.

“We’ve tried to make room for that, tried to make sure we can pay people in these important parts of our economy appropriately so that we can recruit people into these areas.”

He said the Albanese government was pursuing a “combination of spending restraint elsewhere, finding all of those savings, some modest but meaningful tax reform means that we can pay for these priorities”.

“The focus for us is we have some unfinished business when it comes to some of the tax measures that we’ve already announced, multinationals, super tax concessions and the like and that’s our focus rather than new elements of an agenda on that front,” he said.