Government moves to close popular tax loophole

The NSW Government is launching a new crackdown on land tax compliance, putting landowners not paying their fair share on notice.

Acting Chief Commissioner of State Revenue Kelly Wood said a new investment of $7.1 million from the NSW Government will improve information management and help fund additional compliance officers to identify people who are avoiding the tax.

“The majority of people are doing the right thing, but some people have been avoiding paying land tax for years, making it unfair for those who are meeting their obligations,” Ms Wood said.

Land tax is paid by those whose aggregate taxable landholdings is above the tax-free threshold, which is $692,000 for the 2019 year.

In 2018, around 190,000 individuals and 60,000 companies were required to pay land tax. The average amount payable was $14,803, or $6678 for individuals and $39,629 for companies.

“Revenue NSW is also offering a three-month amnesty period for landholders who may be unaware of their land tax liabilities to come forward and tell us about their landholdings without incurring any additional penalty on top of their existing liability,” Ms Wood said.

Landowners are advised to contact a financial advisor for advice. Landowners can also update details of their properties via the land tax online portal and sign up to receive future notices of assessment via email. As part of this crackdown, more flexible payment options will be available.

For further information, landowners can contact Revenue NSW via their website (www.revenue.nsw.gov.au) or on 1300 139 816. The three-month amnesty will be up until 31 January 2020.

The crackdown is expected to recoup $100 million in the first year.

How will this crackdown affect your retirement savings?

5 comments

Loopholes that need to be closed are those that would reap billions. Welfare to the wealthy would cover all pensions and the NDIS, etc. Governments seem scared to go there, unfortunately. Guess they are their supporters! 

Land tax is a State issue. NDIS, all pensions etc are Federal Issues. Nothing the States can do about them.

Stats cannot collect Tax, only Federal can collect Tax

"Stats cannot collect Tax, only Federal can collect Tax" ... sorry Jeff, they can and do.

Not income tax but other taxes.

Taxes and duties levied by state and territory governments include:
• payroll tax 4.9% of all taxes,
• stamp duty on the transfer of property 3.7%, and land tax
• taxes on motor vehicles at 2.0% of national tax revenue.

NSW State Government land taxes is  an excessive  rort , eg on average  it costs renters about 25 % of the rent fee they pay if the property is in Sydney , Melb , brisbane inner city properties . the lanlord just passes this excessive tax on to the tenant and the State government rarely speaks about the rivers of gold they collect 

Also note tax office is getting records from AirBnB.  There would be a lot of people who would be concerned as they have not been declaring their full income.  Imagine it would be tempting to fudge the figures.  These days it is not worth trying to outfox the tax office.  They have tentacles everywhere.

But their "tentacles" don't extend to a large number of corporations who manage to pay little or no tax with well known loopholes and dodgy deductions. Why don't we see published figures on tax data for the big companies and overseas tax havens?

5 comments



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