Qld land tax to rely on honour system of interstate owners

Administering Queensland’s ‘ludicrous’ land tax policy will rely solely on Australian land owners self-reporting, a property expert has claimed.

Treasurer Cameron Dick continues to stubbornly defend his controversial land tax policy, despite multiple states and territories now refusing to co-operate and experts questioning whether the plan has become mission impossible.

So determined is Mr Dick to tax those with interstate properties, he has hit back at NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s refusal to co-operate, declaring “we don’t need him” and that land registries, title registers and valuations will be manually trawled to ensure compliance.

Baffled property experts have questioned whether the tedious and time-consuming approach would make the costs of enforcing the “tax grab” outstrip potential revenue as Tasmania and the Northern Territory confirmed they have taken the same stance as NSW.

And despite the Treasurer on Monday claiming he had made the land tax “very clear with the other jurisdictions,” The Courier-Mail can confirm Victoria and the Northern Territory have not been approached.

Treasurer Cameron Dick. Picture: NewsWire/Sarah Marshall

But Mr Dick said he did not need Mr Perrottet’s help and could simply take the “publicly available” data to enforce the tax on people who have investment properties in two states – which experts have warned could trigger lower vacancies and higher rents.

“If he (Mr Perrottet) doesn’t want to help us, that’s fine,” Mr Dick said.

“We don’t need him to close this loop.

“The data on ownership and the data on land valuation is already public, it’s available publicly across Australia and across every state so we’re going to continue down this path.”

When asked if the government’s land tax would then rely on the honesty of interstate property owners declaring their holdings, Mr Dick said it would be “an honesty system backed up by the work of the Queensland Revenue Office”.

He said Mr Perrottet was made fully aware of Queensland’s land tax plan last year and had only changed his tune because he was “likely to lose” the upcoming state election.

But both Tasmanian Treasurer Michael Ferguson and Northern Territory counterpart Eva Lawler followed in Mr Perrottet’s footsteps on Monday, declaring their governments’ legislation did not support the land tax and they would opt to protect resident’s property data.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gaye Gerard

“Regarding any proposal to share land tax information, the Tasmanian Government takes the privacy of taxpayers and their information extremely seriously and is bound by our own legislative requirements,” Mr Ferguson said.

Ms Lawler said any possible data release from the NT would be costly and subject to legal advice and in any case, it would be “inconsistent with the Territory’s policy of not imposing land tax”.

“The Territory Revenue Office has not been approached by Queensland with any request to provide data … if a formal request for the above information were to be received from the Queensland government, its final release would be subject to approval from the respective agencies responsible for data collection, and the Registrar-General’s office advises it may seek legal advice as to the appropriateness of its release,” Ms Lawler said.

Tasmanian Treasurer Michael Ferguson.

“If deemed appropriate, costs would be incurred by Queensland to configure the reporting extracts.”

Mr Dick claimed on Monday that Queensland did not need to approach its counterparts, but on September 14 he said the Queensland Revenue Office was working across jurisdictions with other revenue officers and he had “not heard anything other than co-operation”.

Meanwhile, property experts including REIQ chief operating officer Dean Milton, raised doubts over the government’s capacity to manually cross-reference all of Australia’s property data without the assistance of interstate revenue offices.

“What’s their identifier for a rental property from a title search? I’d assume they have to compare it to some other form of data, such as real estate listings or ATO data,” Mr Milton said.

Northern Territory Treasurer Eva Lawler with Queensland Treasuer Cameron Dick in July. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Sarah Marshall

“They’ve put on nine extra (FTEs) people to do this and it sounds like nine is not suitable to do that.

“The cost of compliance here will outweigh revenue, so we hope they have a better way than the manual approach.”

Buyers’ agency Propertology’s head of research, Simon Pressley, also slammed the “ludicrous” admin-heavy policy that he said relied solely upon on Australian land owners self-reporting.

“Administering this ludicrous policy relies heavily on land owners who live all over Australia to self-report the details of land interests,” he said.

“One can just imagine how much valuable taxpayer revenue gets wasted on antiquated and grossly inefficient government administration.”

His words were echoed by Professor George Williams, a constitutional expert of the University of NSW, who said Queensland potentially could not enforce the new reforms if other states did not cough up their residents’ information.

Originally published as Qld land tax to rely on honour system of interstate owners