Australia is now seeing perhaps the starkest example in recent history of how tax changes affect human behaviour and the economy as a whole.
Since May's budget announcement of changes to capital-gains tax and negative-gearing concessions, housing prices have fallen 5 per cent. Various industry predictions say they will fall up to 15 per cent. The Commonwealth Bank, the nation's biggest home lender, has it at 9 per cent.
Using the CommBank's estimate, that is more than total federal government annual revenue and about half Australia's annual gross domestic product.
