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SA Treasurer Kevin Foley to announce land tax changes
Article from: The Advertiser
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GREG KELTON, LAUREN NOVAK, DANIEL WILLS and RUSSELL EMMERSON
January 28, 2010 11:44am
MORE than 75,000 investors will be spared from paying land tax under changes announced by Kevin Foley, who also will spend an extra $318 million on health.
The Treasurer has announced the threshold for paying land tax will be increased from $110,000 to $300,000 from July 1 while the extra money for health will be provided to meet increasing demand on the public health system.
Mr Foley has told a media conferences the changes have been made possible by "better than anticipated revenue returns". The land tax change would cost around $52 million over the next two to three years.
Homes are taxed based on their value at June 30 each year.
The Valuer-General's valuation feeds into council rates, emergency services levies and land tax.
While people's primary places of residence and rural properties are generally exempt, the State Government recently targeted aggregation, where different owner profiles were used to confuse the levying of land tax.
These changes, combined with rapid increases in property values, resulted in significant hikes in land taxes for some owners last year.
Speculation had been rife in political circles that Mr Foley would announce the changes when he gives details of the Mid-Year Budger Review for 2009-10 and the final Budget outcome for 2008-09.
These financial reports are crucial for both major parties in framing their spending on election promises.
The Opposition, which has already announced details of their land tax policy, has been pressing for the release of the Budget documents since the middle of December.
All other states, and the Commonwealth, released their reviews before Christmas - even Tasmania which goes to the polls at the same time as SA in March.
The Liberal Party had promised to cut land tax for 57,000 South Australians if elected in March.
Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond has pledged the party's land-tax policy will lift the base threshold from $110,000 to $250,000.
She said the policy would cost $130 million over four years but would also mean people with properties valued at more than $250,000 would save up to $420 a year.
She said recent figures showed South Australians pay 62 per cent more in land tax than the average Australian and seven times more than West Australians.
Property Council of Australia SA executive director Nathan Paine welcomed the pledge.
"The Property Council also strongly supports the initiative to index thresholds to average land value inflation, providing more certainty to investors," he said.
Mr Paine said the proposed cuts would provide limited relief to the commercial property sector which was "a critical generator of investment and employment".
I'm guessing that before they announced this they had already "balanced the books" elsewhere with respect to tax revenue.Aidan wrote:I'll go out on a limb here and say this is bad news for the state! SA needs to fund a lot of infrastructure, and if we always have to wait for the federal government, we're going to be disappointed. So we need to levy taxes...
For this year, and probably next financial year, of course they have. But firstly they haven't, and can't, balance the books decades in advance, and secondly there are still other state taxes that better deserve to be cut.monotonehell wrote:I'm guessing that before they announced this they had already "balanced the books" elsewhere with respect to tax revenue.Aidan wrote:I'll go out on a limb here and say this is bad news for the state! SA needs to fund a lot of infrastructure, and if we always have to wait for the federal government, we're going to be disappointed. So we need to levy taxes...