Opinion
As a housing shortage looms, is it time to stop plucking foreigners?
Lower duty surcharges may not be a silver bullet, but it is difficult to see how higher rates will encourage much-needed new investment.
Matthew CridlandJean-Baptiste Colbert, a 17th-century French politician, famously said: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."
This explains why, in less than four years, all six states have quickly introduced duty surcharges on foreign buyers of residential property. More foreigners plucked, fewer locals hissed.
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