It had to be the most leaked budget in history so it was all a bit of an anti-climax when Treasurer Wayne Swan got to his feet to read his speech.

However, as usual, there were a few nasties hidden away in the fine print.

From July 1, 2009 the definition of income for Centrelink purposes will be changed to include salary-sacrificed superannuation contributions.

This will affect those who receive family assistance or pay child support, as well as anybody below pensionable age.

From that date, eligible income for the superannuation co-contribution will also include salary sacrificed contributions.

No longer will a person on $58,980 a year be able to salary sacrifice $30,000 to super to reduce their income to a level where the full co-contribution of $1,500 is payable.

The changes for eligibility for the co-contribution do not take effect until June 2009, so a window of opportunity will stay open for two more financial years – a higher earning person who wants to grab two lots of co-contribution could make a contribution for the current financial year and a further contribution for the year ending June 2009.

Another clever strategy that got the chop was salary sacrificing for negative gearing purposes.

There’s nothing new about doing this, I wrote about it extensively here five years ago, but it was one of those techniques that would have to fall into the “too good to be true” category.

Think about a family where the husband earns a high salary and the wife has become a full-time mother.

They jointly bought an investment property, when they were both working, to enjoy the tax breaks presented by negative gearing, but now that she has stopped work, they have a tax problem.

Because she has no taxable income she cannot use the normally tax-deductible shortfall created by the interest and rates being more than the rents.

Until now, the husband could go to the employer and ask that the entire interest bill be salary-sacrificed out of his gross income.

If his salary is $85,000 a year, and the total interest bill is $15,000 a year, his salary is reduced to $70,000.

There is no FBT because investment loan interest is tax deductible. Even though he owns only half the asset it enables him to effectively claim 100 per cent of the interest, while his wife receives 50 per cent of the rents virtually tax free.

The FBT rules have been changed to disallow this from budget night.

The big losers in the budget are single pensioners. Most pensioner couples can scrape by on the full age pension of $23,754 a year, but it’s a tragedy when a spouse dies and the survivor, usually a widow, has to get by on just $14,217 a year.

That’s an immediate drop in income of $183 a week with barely any reduction in living expenses to compensate.

They are the battlers who Labor forgot.