Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk must dump tax on rents

Annastacia Palaszczuk must act now and dump Labor’s mess of a rent tax before things get even worse for renters and the government, writes The Editor. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s housing roundtable raised a lot of good ideas to help with the crisis that is leaving working people right across the state without a roof over their heads.

From a tax on vacant properties to encourage development, to cracking down on too much Airbnb-style short-term rentals, and mandating the construction of social and affordable housing in new developments – there were lots of good ideas put on the table.

No doubt many more will percolate up through the submissions ahead of the formal housing summit the Premier has called for October 20 as a direct result of The Courier-Mail’s Hitting Home campaign over the past week.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

But the Premier surely cannot expect anyone struggling with the soaring cost of housing to believe her government is sincere until she dumps what has become a very awkward tax on rents to be imposed by the Palaszczuk government from the middle of next year.

As we have been reporting, the change will mean that for the first time anywhere in the country, the value of any interstate land holdings by an individual will be used to calculate the tax on their Queensland property holdings.

This could see rents hiked by up to $150 overnight – as of course any landlords in such a tightly held market are going to pass any tax hike directly on to their tenants.

It effectively means the Palaszczuk government is taxing renters. It must be dumped.

But Treasurer Cameron Dick is stubbornly refusing to budge – his ego apparently more important than the plight of Queenslanders struggling to make ends meet.

Mr Dick says instead that it’s all somehow about fairness – as it is apparently “a well-promoted tax-avoidance scheme to buy property in different jurisdictions, thereby avoiding the land tax threshold”.

The Treasurer also tried to claim that nobody at Friday’s roundtable session had raised the issue – despite a number of the participants later confirming that was not the case.

Treasury is understood to be backing Mr Dick, with an argument behind closed doors that the other states will surely follow. But this change was flagged last year and legislated with this year’s budget, and no other state has even signalled a follow – indeed when our reporter on Saturday asked, they all said there were no plans (other than Victoria, where the government just refused to respond to our questions).

Treasurer Dick seems convinced that landlords are generous souls who will not pass on a tax increase – using as evidence the fact that they did not drop rents when interest rates went lower.

But as AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said on Friday, it is “basic economics” that a tax increase on investors will be passed on to the tenant.

Mr Oliver also echoed warnings from developers that another likely impact is that fewer investors will look to spend their money in Queensland, leading to fewer properties available – the very thing that Friday’s roundtable spent most of its time debating. Bizarre.

We suggest the Premier perhaps instructs her Treasurer to instead hypothecate some of the billions from his new super-profits tax on miners to affordable housing, and dump this mess of a rent tax that – even at the very least of its potential impacts – risks making things worse for renters, and for the government.