(SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA) – Australia’s Treasury secretary, Jenny Wilkinson, urged Labor to avoid special capital gains tax carve-outs, saying proposed changes should apply across assets to avoid “significant new distortion” in the tax system.

Wilkinson made the case at a post-budget Australian Business Economists lunch in Sydney, where she framed the debate around consistency in how different forms of income are taxed.

She said the reforms were intended to reduce distortions by treating investment income more like wage and labor income and by applying new CGT arrangements consistently “wherever it came from, whatever type of investment was earning the income.”

Her remarks came as the government weighed whether changes to capital gains tax should include exceptions for sectors such as tech and startups. Wilkinson argued against that approach.

The intervention placed Australia’s top Treasury official squarely in a live policy debate inside the government’s budget and tax discussions. Rather than support tailored relief for particular industries, she pointed to the risk that exemptions would create fresh imbalances inside the tax system.

Wilkinson’s argument centered on the design of the reform itself. If the aim is to reduce distortions, the changes need to apply across assets rather than create separate treatment for selected investments.

That position also tied the proposed tax changes to a broader principle set out in her remarks: income earned from investments should move closer, in tax treatment, to wage and labor income. She presented that as the rationale for applying new arrangements consistently across income sources.

Sector-specific carve-outs have remained part of the discussion as the government considers how the changes would affect areas such as tech and startups. Wilkinson’s comments signaled resistance to writing those exceptions into the final model.

Her choice of forum also underlined where the debate now sits. The post-budget lunch brought the issue into a setting focused on the government’s wider economic program, with tax design and budget choices under active discussion.

Any next move by the government on CGT reform will now unfold against Wilkinson’s warning that special treatment for some assets would undermine the stated purpose of the change. Her remarks set out a preference for a framework that treats new capital gains tax arrangements the same way across different forms of investment income.

That leaves the carve-out question as one of legislative design rather than political slogan. Wilkinson’s position was direct: apply the reform broadly, and avoid building “significant new distortion” into the system the changes are supposed to fix.