"I found I was getting this ridiculous money from the government," Mr Smith told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. "That's wrong, I said - I'm wealthy. My accountant said 'that's how it works, that's what you have to do'. I can't stop it. I think it's outrageous for wealthy people to be getting money from the government." Dividend imputation - which is common globally - provides a dividend recipient with a tax credit for tax that has already been paid by the company producing the dividend. This is to avoid double taxation on the same amount of money. Changes introduced by John Howard and Peter Costello provided cash back to people who paid no income tax but still received dividends from their portfolios. This was the unusual quirk Labor had planned to abolish. Mr Smith said Labor should have applied a means test to its policy to ensure that only rich Australians lost the entitlement. As previously reported, Labor considered doing this but decided against it because it would have robbed the party of billions in potential revenue.

The Coalition ruthlessly targeted Labor over the policy - branding it a "retiree tax" - before and during the election campaign, and many Labor figures have conceded it played a role in the party's unexpected defeat in May 18. Liberal backbencher Tim Wilson conducted a series of public inquiries around the country which heard from upset retirees who made modest financial gains from their cash refunds but relied on the annual payments. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video "Labor sold the whole thing incompetently," Mr Smith said on Tuesday. "They should have put a threshold on it, so wealthy people like me would pay the tax, but pensioners and less well-off people would not meet that threshold." When Mr Smith complained about the cash refunds to the ATO in 2017, he received a reply from commissioner Chris Jordan, who promised to look into the businessman's "unusual request" to pay more tax.

"It's not every day I get such a request - in fact I can't think of any day I have been asked that question," Mr Jordan wrote. Loading Mr Murrell said Mr Smith had a "classic superannuation fund" and the annual tax refunds he received would be in line with other high net worth Australians. "Every individual of Dick's standing would have a similar fund, I would assume," Mr Murrell said. Abolishing franking credits would have saved a Labor government $5.6 billion in year one, growing to $8 billion a year, which it could have used to fund other priorities.