The government has refused to disclose details of the proposed reforms, but the prime minister said they would focus directly on affordability and help remove the barriers faced by homebuyers to buy. a first house.
“The stamp duty is a tax I would like to eliminate, but we have to do it with the support of the federal government,” Mr. Perrottet while making a SES funding announcement Monday in Lismore.
“What you will see in the next budget … [is] ads related to home accessibility. Obviously, the stamp is the biggest impediment, especially for young people to get the keys to their first family home.
“Ambitious plan”
The comments raise the stakes ahead of a meeting of state and federal leaders scheduled for Friday, where health care reform is expected to dominate, but with the stamp duty emerging as a topic of great notoriety.
Dr Chalmers raised state hopes in March saying he was “ready to lead a conversation” about changing stamp duties to land taxes if Labor won the May election.
Monday’s tax discussion came after it was reported that the NSW government would proceed with an ambitious plan that would replace the stamp duty with the land tax over time.
According to the plan reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, buyers of new homes would choose whether to pay stamp duty or an annual land tax on their home in perpetuity.
The top 20% of households would be excluded from having the option, in an attempt to soften what is estimated to be a 20% deficit in tax revenue associated with the abandonment of stamp duty.
Prime Minister and Treasury spokesman Matt Kean tried to pour cold water on reports of an advanced plan to phase out the stamp duty, arguing that the budget would include proposals focused on housing accessibility that would advance the stamp duty reform rather than anything substantive to review the system.
In Lismore, Mr Perrottet said he would raise the issue of stamp duty at a meeting with the federal government and state and territorial leaders on Friday, among other issues such as health care reform.
Last week, Dr. Chalmers said all jurisdictions face significant economic and budgetary challenges and indicated that the federal government was willing to work with states in a new round of productivity-enhancing reforms.
But on Monday, he almost ruled out compensating states for property tax reform.
Economists are largely unanimous in their position that a state will not be able to move from stamp duty to land tax without the support of the federal government to cover the revenue deficit.
“It’s all up to the federal government, that’s what the plan is based on,” Grattan Institute housing director Brendan Coates told The Australian Financial Review. “The reality is that the transition to a land tax creates an excessive drop in revenue for the state government to take on on its own.”
Coates said the ACT’s decision to phase out the 20-year stamp duty in favor of the land tax had been successful 10 years after the transition to a single real estate market. He said the rise in property prices had allowed the state to largely avoid a tax revenue deficit.
“They’ve been collecting a lot more in land taxes than they should have with stamp duty … it’s proven to be the model that all states should adopt, which is gradually reducing the stamp duty. while adjusting the land tax, ”he said.
The stamp duty is a huge revenue boost for NSW, and the annual revenue raised so far exceeds estimates of nearly $ 2 billion with one month left in the year.
The mid-year budget review, released in December, projected $ 13.4 billion in stamp duty revenue, nearly $ 2 billion more than budgeted six months earlier, which was 1,800 in itself. millions of dollars more than the previous year.