Australia's New Financial Year: Tax Cuts, Wage Rises, and Superannuation Changes

July 1 — how did we get here?

With the new financial year comes a raft of changes to taxes and entitlements, and news rules.

ABC reporter Dannielle Maguire has a round-up of the changes, including:

A minor tax cut

A minimum wage pay rise

Payday super

Parental leave

Fuel excise discount slashed

Centrelink payment thresholds

Benchmark power prices

Sender ID register

Check out the details on what it all means:

Australia's unpaid super bill has blown out by $500 million in the past year, now costing Australians $6.3 billion in lost retirement savings each year, the Super Members Council says.

The council, which includes the big industry funds, undertook analysis of recently released ATO data, as new payday super laws come into effect today.

SMC's analysis showed that more than one in four workers (28%) were underpaid an average of $1,850 in 2023-24 — up from $1,730 the previous year.

"This means around 3.4 million workers aren't being paid some or all of the super what they are owed, potentially leaving some more than $30,000 worse off at retirement due to the loss of compounding investment returns," SMC said.

Legislation coming into effect today means Australian employers will now need to pay workers' superannuation at the same time as their wages, instead of every three months.

Accounting firms could be asked to split their lucrative consulting services from their audit functions and individual firm partners could face far greater scrutiny and penalties for legal breaches, under a shake up of the industry being consulted on by the federal government.

Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has vowed to address gaps in regulation of audit firms in the wake of the recent PwC tax leaks saga, and the more recent scandal at KPMG.

Mr Mulino will today release a Treasury options paper on the regulation of accounting, auditing and consulting firms in Australia.

Under allegations raised in parliament, partners at KPMG leaked client information and mishandled a whistleblower who raised the alarm.

Since then, a host of partners at the firm, including its CEO Andrew Yates and chairman Martin Sheppard have resigned.

And on Tuesday, two men were sacked from Ernst and Young after the prime minister's personal banking information was allegedly breached.

For more, here's the story by Nassim Khadem:

The nation's housing market weakened further in June, with national home values falling 0.4%, the biggest monthly decline since December 2022.

Sydney and Melbourne led the downturn while growth in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide slowed, according to new data from Cotality.

Many economists are expecting housing conditions to remain soft in the months ahead due to interest rates, weak sentiment and tax policy changes.

For more, here's the story by Lin Lin:

Good morning, and welcome to the ABC's finance blog — and the new financial year!

I'll be guiding you through the latest market action for the next few hours.

And it looks like the local share market will have another quiet start to its day.

ASX futures, which are a rough indicator of how the market may open, have risen by just 0.1%. So it suggests the market will open either flat, or slightly higher.

The Australian dollar has recovered slightly to 69.2 US cents, but is still down 3.4% over the past month.

AI frenzy drives Wall Street higher

The 'AI trade', meanwhile, continued to push Wall Street's industrial stock index to new record highs.

Once again, it seems technology stocks with any kind of connection to artificial intelligence rallied overnight, including Nvidia (2.6%), Apple (+2.7%), SpaceX (+4.1%), AMD (+7.7%), Sandisk (+10.9%) and Intel (+6%).

So today investors were feeling incredibly bullish, and not at all bothered by concerns that many of these companies might be overspending on AI investments — which may take many years before there's a return on investment (if it even happens at all).

Nevertheless, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3% to 53,219 points, its highest-ever closing figure.

The benchmark S & P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite indexes gained 0.8% and 1.5% respectively.

Anyway, please grab a coffee, tea or whatever you normally have in the morning, and I'll have more updates for you shortly!