But now, while both are framing their changes as generational because they are chasing the votes of the young, Labor has chosen wealth and the Liberals inflation.The budget tax reforms to negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount and discretionary trusts have been shaped into an argument in favour of wage earners and against passive earners.This is compounded by the new $250 tax offset for wages and salaries only, the first time investment returns have been excluded from a tax cut, and a model Treasurer Jim Chalmers has called "architecture" to build future tax cuts on.This is a subtle but important shift from the way Labor has talked about tax in the past Rather than target the top end of the income scale as it did last time, the Liberal tax plan outlined last night will start with the bottom tax bracket and work its way up.This may be a recognition that, despite the attention devoted to the 45 per cent top rate, it is those working their way up through the lower tax brackets who are most jolted by bracket creep.Once again, the decision will come at a cost and create losers, both on the spending side of the budget — permanent bracket indexation will handicap federal revenues — and on the party's side, which will mount an active defence of asset income.The suggestion of one Liberal that Labor's plan was to push Australians into "wage servitude" might appeal to budding young investors, but it is not exactly a tailor-made pitch to the millions of Australians who do earn wages and do not think themselves slaves.That is to say, there's going to be a fight about this, maybe even an ugly one