Negative gearing needs to be on the tax reform agenda but not necessarily abolished, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen says.
Mr Bowen says negative gearing has to be on the table in any tax review.
"I'm not saying it needs to be abolished. It needs to be dealt with," he told an economic event on the sidelines of the ALP national conference.
But Mr Bowen said he opposed increasing the GST or broadening its base.
"Just putting the GST up, I'm sorry, is not a tax reform. It's a tax increase, not a tax reform."
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Mr Bowen told ALP delegates that former prime minister and treasurer Paul Keating recently warned him about any GST increase.
"He said, `Mate, no mate, no mate, if you do this the premiers will be back to you in five years because they'll spend it, and then you'll have a GST at 20 per cent.' And he's right."
Mr Bowen also said he would not race to increase or cut personal income tax rates.
"Increasing personal tax rates when you've got bracket creep moving people into higher rates as we speak, is not something I race to do."
The Reserve Bank believes negative gearing should be reviewed with other housing-related tax concessions that could be fuelling speculative investment in housing.
But negative gearing is another issue the federal government has effectively ruled out from what is supposed to be a broad-based review of the tax system.
The government has also said it will never make changes to superannuation tax concessions and won't be leading the charge to lift the GST rate or broaden its base, leaving that to the states to pursue as they are the beneficiaries of GST revenue.
NSW Premier Mike Baird has proposed raising the GST from 10 per cent to 15 per cent.
