New analysis has shown that women will be more impacted than men by Labor’s retiree tax – yet another reason why Labor must scrap their grossly unfair policy.

From The Australian this morning:

“According to the Australian Taxation Office statistics from the 2017 financial year, women represent more than half of all Australians who rely on franking credit refunds for income — 480,000 female recipients compared to 367,000 males.

 For those aged 40 to 49, the impact on women is the most disproportionate, with more than double the number of women compared with men — 57,000 to 28,000.”

“Labor talks a lot about gender equity and quotas, but their plan to slash the income of seniors has been exposed as clearly inequitable – it will hit women hardest,” National Director of Advance Australia Gerard Benedet said.

“Older women are often working part-time, they are the backbone of community organisations and charities, and they’re helping care for elderly parents as well as grandchildren in many cases.”

“Labor’s hit to women’s income will have a big impact across our community – and it puts both physical and mental strain on people who are already working so hard to support and care for others,” Mr Benedet said.

There is already an inequity when it comes to retirement incomes for women – with women retiring with an average of 47% less superannuation than men while living 5 years longer than men (Source: Women in Super, a national advocacy and networking group that works to improve women's retirement outcomes).

“It’s precisely because women retire with lower incomes that they will be hit hardest.  That’s because Labor’s tax hits those on low incomes the most – because it removes their franking credits. Those on higher retirement incomes who pay plenty of tax will continue to get the benefits of the tax credit. Proportionately that means more women will have their income reduced,” Mr Benedet said“Labor knows that there is already an inequity when it comes to women’s retirement incomes – yet their policy will to make it even worse?  And importantly, why aren’t Labor women standing up and demanding that this blatantly unfair policy be scrapped?”