‘It’s disappointing’: Property taxes to ‘prop up’ Victoria’s books — again

Treasurer Tim Pallas will hand down his fifth state budget today, forecasting $11.3 billion in surpluses over four years.

That’s a better result than many predicted given the downturn in the housing market and Labor’s stunning defeat in the federal election.

But many experts say the surplus is again too heavily built on property taxes.

“Increased taxes on gold miners, increased taxes on foreigners buying property, and increased taxes on luxury cars.”
“Bad time to be a Chinese gold miner with a Ferrari.”
-Ross Stevenson

“It’s disappointing to see that property taxes are going to be increased to prop up the bottom line once again,” Craig Whatman, partner at Pitcher Partners, told Neil Mitchell.

“There is some increases to the foreign stamp duty surcharge and the foreign land tax surcharge, but there’s also some changes that are going to affect Australian residents more generally.

“There’s a removal of part of the exemption that applies to the principal place of residence where you’ve got your residence over multiple titles.

“There’s also a change to what’s called the corporate reconstruction exemption … where businesses want to transfer properties between members of their group; there’s no change of ownership, they transfer the properties to make their businesses more efficient.

“At the moment that transfers gets a full stamp duty exemption .. but will pay 10 per cent going forward.

“It’s a bit disappointing because they already paid stamp duty when the property was acquired in the first place.”

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