Wealthy residents of Australia’s ritziest suburbs saw eye-watering incomes surge by up to $90,000 in a single year

Wealthy residents in some of Australia’s ritziest suburbs saw their already bloated incomes surge by a staggering $90,000 in just a single year, new data reveals.

As the country began its recovery from the Covid pandemic, figures released yesterday show the most well-heeled enjoyed a very lucrative return to business as usual.

The new data release from the Australian Taxation Office for the 2021-22 period has crowned the Harbourside suburb of Double Bay in Sydney’s inner-east as home to those with the highest average taxable income at $354,308 per year.

That hefty sum jumped sharply from $266,381 in the 2020-21 tax year and was more than $150,000 higher than recorded before the pandemic.

That’s despite the total number of taxpayers living in Double Bay shrinking by a couple of hundred.

Seven of the top 10 suburbs for taxable income are in New South Wales – all of them within the Greater Sydney region.

Australia’s second-highest average income enclave was in Perth’s prestigious Peppermint Grove and Cottesloe pocket, where locals bagged $295,283 in 2021-22, up from $229,805 a year earlier.

The neighbourhoods of Toorak and Hawksburn in Melbourne, where you’ll find some of the country’s most spectacular homes, recorded average annual incomes of $266,020, coming in at fourth spot overall.

But the ATO data release points to a migration of the Victorian capital’s elite from the inner-city to the peaceful and pricey Mornington Peninsula.

About an hour’s drive south of the CBD, the coastal strip was inundated with wealthy Melburnians during the early phase of Covid, many of whom flocked to multimillion-dollar weekender and holiday homes.

Portsea has just 586 taxpayers living within its picturesque boundary but on average they bagged more than $221,000 in a single year.

That figure remained steady between the 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years.

Not far away, Point Leo saw its average income hit $166,284 in 2021-22, up by more than $67,000 on the year before, while residents of Flinders enjoyed a sharp increase from $95,941 in 2020-21 to more than $150,000 just 12 months later.

Of all tax revenue collected during the 2021-22 financial year – a whopping $530 billion – half came from individual income tax.

Another 24 per cent came via companies while 14 per cent was generated via the GST.

While high-earning individuals comprise just five per cent of total taxpayers, they provided about 40 per cent of the total income tax raked in by the ATO.

However, not all of those millionaires paid their fair share of tax, the figures reveal.

The number of Aussies earning more than $1 million in a total year but paying no tax rose to 102 in 2021-22, up sharply from 66 in the prior year.

Thanks to savvy accountants, that group of tax-free richies collectively wrote off $279 million worth of income tax deductions in order to bring their bills down to nil.

On average, analysis of the data by the Australia Institute found those 100-odd millionaires each took home $3.8 million in 2021-22.

Also contained within the data release are figures on the country’s 2.3 million landlords, many of whom have enjoyed record high rent price increases over the past few years.

The 2021-22 financial year only includes two months of interest rate hikes, so the returns of property investors were yet to be impacted by the Reserve Bank’s aggressive war on inflation.

In that year, landlords enjoyed a profit windfall, collectively banking $6 billion in net rental income.

That’s a far cry from long-term trends, where generous tax concessions, higher interest rates and surging property prices meant heavy losses were more common.

And the country’s highest-paid professions by taxable income have also been confirmed, with surgeons each earning $430,000 on average.

They were closely followed by medical industry colleagues anaesthetists, with an average taxable income of $431,000.

In fact, five of the top 10 occupations with the highest taxable incomes are in medicine, with those working in finance accounting for two spots.

Mining engineers also did well in 2021-22, taking home on average more than $214,000 each, while those working in the legal sector earned $204,934 each on average.

On the flip side of the wealth highlights, the ATO data also reveals Australia’s lowest-earning suburbs, with three of them in New South Wales.

The Newcastle suburb of Callaghan, where you’ll find the main campus of the University of Newcastle, had an average taxable income of $20,878.

Similarly, those residing within the inner-city area surrounding The University of New South Wales had an average taxable income of $20,892.

The area taking in students studying at The University of Newcastle’s main campus at Callaghan, postcode 2308, earned an average taxable income of $20,878.

The next poorest postcode was 2052, taking in the University of NSW area, with an average taxable income of $20,892.

Queensland had four of the top 10 lowest average income spots, while South Australia had two.