Land tax changes being revised, details to be released next week
Premier Steven Marshall says the land tax plan is being amended – the first indication of change amid significant resistance. Details should be released soon.
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The State Government is revising its controversial land tax changes and a new plan may be released as early as next week, Premier Steven Marshall has revealed.
It comes as the Government missed its self-imposed August 31 deadline to release the details of its land tax policy.
Instead, Mr Marshall said the plan was being amended and would be made public “within the next two weeks... probably next week”.
“We have listened to people (and) we’ve got some new information,” he said.
“We’re doing some further modelling and we hope to be back to the people of South Australia in the next week or so with a revised position.
“We think this is really important but the theme is the same – We want to reduce tax in South Australia; we want to grow our economy; we want to create more jobs and create a more prosperous future for our next generation right here in South Australia.”
The tax changes aim to prevent land owners from paying less by splitting their properties between multiple legal structures, such as trusts.
Because land is taxed in a similar way to income – where the percentage rate paid depends on the total value of property declared – the ability to split means a lower rate for each property, and there less tax is paid overall.
When asked if the Government was scaling back its policy, Mr Marshall said people could expect “a Government which is focused on reducing tax”.
“I know some of our political opponents don’t choose to see it that way but the reality is when you look at the three issues, the aggregation, the threshold and the top marginal rates - those three things taken together reduce the land tax that we’ll be receiving from the first of July next year,” he said.
Mr Marshall also insisted fellow Liberal MP Steve Murray had not been given a dressing down during the Liberal seminar in the Barossa today after he publicly slammed the policy, describing it as “neither fair, nor sustainable, nor competitive”.
“The thing about the Liberal party which is very different from our political opponents is people are quite entitled to argue their point,” he said.
Mr Murray told The Advertiser the Premier “has been very gracious” about the matter.
Home builders had previously warned the proposed changes could send house prices tumbling while Business SA feared the policy could spark a mass property sell-off.
Opposition treasury spokesman Stephen Mullighan said the Liberal party was “utterly divided” by the land tax policy and has had more than two months to outline the details of the changes.
“The Premier has missed his own deadline for releasing the draft legislation - it’s now clear the Government still doesn’t know who will be impacted by these changes and how much more landowners will have to pay,” he said.
“The Government needs to release its draft legislation along with the economic and financial modeling it has done so South Australians can understand the impact the Liberals’ land tax hike will have on landowners, renters and the state’s economy.”
Mr Marshall said once released, the plan would undergo weeks of consultation before it was introduced into State Parliament in October.
The Government expects the changes to take effect from July 1 next year.