WHAT WAS CLAIMED
The federal government has introduced seven new taxes in 2025, including an inheritance tax and a spare bedroom tax.
OUR VERDICT
False. The taxes are either fabricated or misrepresent several changes or proposals.
AAP FACTCHECK - The Australian government did not introduce seven new taxes in 2025, despite claims on social media.
The supposed new taxes are either entirely fabricated or misrepresent recent or proposed changes to taxation and superannuation.
The claim is in an Instagram video in which a man speaks against a background image of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
"Let's run through some of the new taxes introduced in 2025," he says.
The man goes on to list seven supposedly new taxes the federal government has introduced.
The claim has also appeared on Facebook.
AAP FactCheck asked the Instagram user for evidence to support the claim but did not receive any response.
The first claimed tax change is a supposed increase in the personal income tax rate.
However, personal income tax rates have not increased.
In fact, the government cut tax rates for millions of workers in 2024/25, including the bottom two tax rates and higher income thresholds for the two highest brackets.
The bottom tax rate will fall twice more over the next two years under the Labor government's policy (page 1), reducing the effective income tax rate for all workers earning more than $18,201 per year.
While the total amount of income tax collected has increased over time, this is not a specific policy change by the current government.
Rather, this is due to bracket creep, which occurs when wage growth pushes workers into higher income tax brackets and when economic growth increases the overall tax base.
The second supposed "new tax" mentioned in the video is an alleged rise in the GST rate from 10 per cent to between 12 and 14 per cent.
However, the government has not announced any changes to GST rates, which the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) website states have been unchanged at 10 per cent for 25 years.
There have been numerous calls to increase the GST rate recently; however, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said it's not being considered.
The third tax, which the video describes as "arguably the worst of the lot", is an unrealised capital gains tax.
The Albanese government did introduce legislation in 2023 to increase tax rates on superannuation balances over $3 million.
This included a plan to tax unrealised superannuation earnings, which would have required tax to be paid on assets held by a fund if they increased in value, even if the gain was not realised by selling the assets.
However, the government announced in October that it would scrap plans to tax unrealised super earnings.
The fourth claimed tax is a supposed inheritance tax.
Australia does not have an inheritance or death tax, and the ATO has confirmed that the government hasn't unveiled any plans to introduce such a tax.
Under existing tax policies, obligations may arise on inherited assets, including capital gains when those assets are sold, while income tax applies to dividends and rental income from inherited shares and property.
However, those arrangements are longstanding and were not implemented by the Albanese government.
The fifth supposed tax was a claimed "spare bedroom tax".
AAP FactCheck has previously debunked this claim, explaining there is no evidence the government has announced plans to tax households with unoccupied bedrooms.
A property analytics company suggested that a tax on spare bedrooms could be an effective way to address Australia's housing supply shortage in a research paper published in August.
But it was not a government policy document and has not received government support.
The penultimate tax in the video is a supposed "view tax" on the Gold Coast.
"If you have an apartment above the fourth floor, your tax increases because of the view that you have."
The federal government has not introduced such a tax in 2025.
In 2024, the City of Gold Coast increased rates for the owners of apartments on the fifth floor or higher, but this was a local government decision with no federal involvement.
The final claimed new tax mentioned in the video is an increase in the superannuation rate.
The amount of superannuation employers are obligated to pay workers increased to 12 per cent in the 2025/26 financial year under changes that were first legislated in 2012/13, according to the ATO website.
But superannuation guarantee requirements are not a tax. The payments are deposited directly into employees' personal super accounts and do not flow to the government's coffers.
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