Capital gains tax, introduced in 1985, is a relatively small but important source of government revenue. This article explores historical trends in capital gains tax, focussing on the behaviours of different entities, and describes Treasury’s modelling framework for forecasting the tax.

This article will analyse the structural and cyclical factors affecting past and expected future Australian Government tax receipts. As a share of the economy, taxes are expected to remain well below the levels of the mid-2000s.

Recent public debate about Australia's company tax arrangements has drawn upon two observations. The first is that, since the 1980s, company tax collections have run ahead of gross operating surplus. The second is that company tax collections as a percentage of gross domestic product are high by...