Yahoo Finance Struggling Aussie mum exposes bleak reality of Stage 3 tax cuts: 'It's horrible'
Emma and her partner are living at her parent's home and work 40 hours each a week and said the government's tax cut provides 'pretty much nothing'.
The government's Stage 3 tax cuts kicked in this week and it's set to put hundreds of dollars into the wallets of Aussies around the country. But one mum has spoken out about how the extra cash will do little to ease the cost-of-living pressures that continue to outpace any support.
Emma Robertson and her partner have been living at her parent's house and they both work 40 hours a week. Despite this, they still aren't able to avoid everyday costs and live "comfortably".
"The tax cuts come in but everything else goes up so it's not justifiable," Robertson explained to A Current Affair. "Childcare [is] one of the biggest things that has gone up."
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Robertson was recently told daycare would be increasing by $17 per day and she believes the Stage 3 tax cut will do "pretty much nothing at all" to help their bottom line.
Aussies on the lower end of the pay scale will only gain about $6 per week from the tax cuts, while those one tax bracket above will pocket an extra $12 per week.
Even if Robertson was in the top tax bracket, the 33-year-old would only be gaining an extra $84 per week. Considering she could be spending an extra $85 a week just on daycare, you can see how she's struggling to find the joy in the small wage bump.
Do the Stage 3 tax cuts help you? Email stew.perrie@yahooinc.com
“When you think about everything else that’s gone up, like car insurance, food prices, fuel, rent, rates, all of that type of stuff … this is not where I saw my life, unfortunately, but it is where we are," she told the Channel 9 program.
The mum to 15-month-old Atlan said they would be "essentially homeless" if they weren't able to stay at her parent's place.
She's calling on the government to provide additional support to struggling families like hers.
“Every single day I wake up and I go what is going to happen this week? What is going to go up today?” she said. “It’s horrible. I never pictured myself being in this situation, ever, but here I am, just scraping by.”
Many Aussies are living with friends or family to save money
Robertson said it's tough raising a family in her parent's home but she said it would be virtually impossible to survive without that roof over their heads.
But they aren't alone as Finder research revealed a little more than one in 10 Australians, which is equivalent to 2.5 million people, had moved into shared housing in the past year.
The research found that 5 per cent of Aussies admitted the soaring cost of rent prompted them to return to shared accommodation, while a further 3 per cent sought out shared accommodation because they could no longer afford their mortgage repayments.
Finder revealed you could save as much as $16,000 a year by house sharing.
"Rents and mortgages have gone through the roof – they are the number-one source of financial stress in Australia and people can no longer cut costs elsewhere to get by," Graham Cooke, head of consumer research at Finder, said.
What are Aussies doing with their Stage 3 tax cut?
It’s no surprise with the cost of living crisis that a third of Aussies are planning to save the extra money from their tax cut, according to NAB, rather than spend it.
Other Aussies are planning to spend their tax cut on offsetting the higher cost of living (29 per cent), followed by paying down debt (22 per cent), which could be something like a home loan or credit card, and investing it (12 per cent). Just 8 per cent say they’ll splurge on non-essentials.
How do I get my tax cut?
Taxpayers don’t need to do anything to get the tax cut.
Employers will automatically adjust the amount of tax they take out of your pay which means you should see an immediate increase in take-home pay from July 1.
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