A new report showing the poorest Australians are supporting the richest is bolstering Labor's opposition to the Turnbull government's company tax cuts.
An Anglicare report found that $68 billion in taxpayer dollars is spent keeping the "wealthiest households wealthy", costing workers about $37 a week.
"This is why Labor has determined we want a fair system," Labor senator Doug Cameron told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
"Workers that are battling to put food on the table, to put shoes on their schoolkid's feet are subsidising the rich and wealthy."
Senator Cameron says Labor wants to make sure the "rorts in the tax system are gone" and that people shouldn't be subsidising negative gearing and capital gains tax.
The Anglicare report looked at the cost of tax measures that benefit the richest 20 per cent of Australians.
These include capital gains tax and superannuation concessions, private education and health tax exemptions, negative gearing and discretionary trusts.
It found these totalled $68 billion annually.
By contrast, the annual cost of the Newstart allowance, the main income support payment while people are unemployed and looking for work, comes in just under $11 billion a year.
"Following the latest round of welfare cuts, these numbers tell us that something has gone badly wrong," Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said.
"We have become a country that cuts from the poorest to give to the richest."
Report author Emma Dawson, from Per Capita, said high-income earners cost the budget more than any single welfare recipient group.
"Too often, the political narrative around our tax and transfer system demonises the most disadvantaged Australians," she said.
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