Thursday, 19 February 2009
Those property owners scheduled to pay land tax on properties destroyed by the recent bushfires will have their land tax on those properties effectively waived in a one-off measure to reduce the financial burden from the recent disaster.
Treasurer John Lenders said anyone who had their property damaged or destroyed by the recent bushfires would have their bills put on hold while the State Revenue Office (SRO) reviewed every case individually.
The SRO will then undertake a review of every destroyed or damaged property waiving or reducing the land tax respectively.
Land tax is normally levied on investment properties or businesses with a land value over $250,000. It is not levied on a person’s principal place of residence, on most primary production properties or on a broad range of community and not for profit organisations.
“This new arrangement will help relieve the financial burden on land owners affected by the bushfires by allowing the SRO to identify those properties destroyed by the bushfire and offer tax relief,” Mr Lenders said.
“Land tax would also be waived for businesses that have been left unable to operate and generate revenue due to bushfire damage.
“Bushfire affected land owners will not have to apply for this review to occur. The SRO will assess affected properties and notify land owners of the outcome later this year.
“However if anyone has received a land tax bill who was affected by the recent bushfires they should immediately contact the SRO on 13 21 61 to have their particular situation considered.
“These devastating once in a lifetime bushfires have affected entire communities and in this context it is appropriate to provide this one-off tax relief.”
Mr Lenders said he had made it clear to the State Revenue Office that they should compassionately consider land tax relief for any property directly affected by the bushfire.
Further land tax assessment notices will start to be delivered to the rest of Victoria this week.
“This year 84 per cent of properties will not attract land tax at all,” Mr Lenders said.
“Since 1999 we have cut land tax by $3 billion, including several adjustments to the tax-free threshold, creating a fairer rate scale and more than halving the top rate of land tax from 5 per cent to just 2.25 per cent now.”
Mr Lenders said there were several reasons that land tax bills might change from year to year including:
• A landowner had purchased additional land;
• A landowner had sub-divided their land;
• A local council had re-zoned the land;
• The general value of property had increased over time which has been assessed independently by a municipality; or
• The state government had changed the rate of land tax.
“In this year’s budget we cut land tax by $490 million while NSW increased their land tax rates by $170 million per year,” Mr Lenders said.
Mr Lenders said about 27 per cent of taxes in Victoria go to the state’s health system, 26 per cent to the education system, 11 per cent to better transport and communications networks and another 11 per cent towards public order and safety.
He said that the Institute of Public Affairs had recently found that a typical business in Victoria pays the second-lowest level of land tax in Australia.
Mr Lenders said that the one-off waiver arrangement may not apply to those few large corporate land tax payers in bushfire affected areas with a land holding worth above $4.4 million.
Anyone who is experiencing financial hardship should immediately contact the SRO.
http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/treasurer/-land-tax-relief-for-bushfire-affected-areas.html
