Inquiry on First Home Ownership

I see two main (and relatively straightforward) methods of helping us first home buyers to overcome the present and ongoing housing crisis - (1) reduce property investor impact, and (2) encourage people to save towards their home. Practical options:

=> Reverse (or at least reduce) the dramatic impact of property investors. Increase the level of capital gains tax on investment properties, and overhaul and/or reduce the tax write-offs and timing, and other excessive incentives of negative gearing. Our tax system is designed to reward and encourage greed and debt (hence the record and rapidly rising levels of household and investor debt). This must be changed. The tax odds are well and truly stacked against first home buyers. The devastating effects of this are all too obvious.

=> Stop punishing people who save. Instead, encourage them to save as large a deposit as possible to reduce the size of their mortgage debt. Many people now renting would use current low interest rates to buy they own home if they could effectively save towards it. They are a number of ways of doing this:

-> remove punitive tax rates on non-salary income of wage and salary earners, and (really) abolish provisional tax (yes, it still exists).

-> allow mortgage payments to be tax deductible, like they are in the US, but only to first home buyers. There would need to be safeguards put in place to avoid exploitation and abuse of this system by those not entitled to it. The First Home Owners Grant has shown the type of abuse that can happen. 

-> immediately introduce Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) like those available in the UK, where the income from certain interest-bearing accounts is tax free. Design these accounts for Australia so that the money (both saved into them and the income re-invested back into them) is restricted to the purchase of a first home.

This pdf file => from the UK Department of Inland Revenue provides background details and answers about these accounts.

I believe many other issues (eg, land release, high migration levels, stamp duty and other taxes) are obvious, but political factors and self-interest mean it is highly unlikely that they will be effectively dealt with.

There are real answers to this crisis, and most do not appear to me to be rocket science. I hope your investigation will have a real impact, and help lead us to the opportunity of home ownership.

Kind regards,
Mark Nelson