Labor's Super Tax

There has been lots of recent commentary about Labor's plan to tax unrealised capital gains in Super funds by an extra 15%.

Labor has argued that the extra 15% tax only applies to returns on Super balances over $3m, and so it's targeted at the wealthy.

For sake of argument, let's accept that position. That doesn't explain why they've decided to apply the tax to unrealised gains (theoretical profits that people haven't received yet). It would be perfectly viable to add an extra 15% super tax on realised gains from Super balances over $3m instead.

Under this modified "extra 15% tax but only when realised" proposal, people with large super balances would still end up paying the extra tax. The main difference between the Labor proposal and the modified proposal is the timing of the tax payment. Labor's proposal would bring forward the tax payment... while the modified proposal would have the tax being paid later.

It's normal to prefer money now instead of money in the future, but realistically the timing factor is more urgent for taxpayers than the government. Bringing forward the 15% premium super tax will cause significant problems for some taxpayers, while applying the tax later (when the gains are realised) is only a slight inconvenience for the government.

Given that most of the controversy has focused on the treatment of unrealised capital gains, it seems like an obvious option for the government to adopt the above modified proposal so that they could avoid the controversy and still get most of the revenue they want.

Why wouldn’t Labor make this change? Is Albanese "doing a Trump" by initially proposing something controversial, and then winding back the worst element, so that the public is more likely to accept the modified (now better) version? Or is he genuinely committed to the "unrealised gains" part of his tax policy? And if so, then why?