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Nope, nope, nope: NSW Premier sinbins Queensland’s land tax plans

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is vowing to resist a request from the Queensland government to provide data that would enable it to hike land taxes for thousands of residents across the border.

Sep 26, 2022, updated Sep 26, 2022
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet leaves a press conference in Sydney. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett)

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet leaves a press conference in Sydney. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett)

Under controversial land tax changes proposed by the Palaszczuk government, NSW investors with Queensland property holdings would pay thousands of dollars in extra charges.

Queensland is seeking the data required to implement the policy, which has previously been described by NSW politicians as a blatant tax grab.

Queensland expects the change to rake in $20 million a year from 2023/24 and impact about 10,000 landholders.

Perrottet pledged to block attempts by Queensland to access relevant NSW data.

“This is a tax implemented by a state that impacts the residents of NSW,” he told reporters on Monday.

“It is wrong and we are not going to comply with it, so we are not going to provide that information.”

Perrottet said the Queensland proposal was not productivity reform, but “poor financial management” that would impact NSW residents, especially retirees, if it proceeded.

“This is a retrospective tax,” he said.

“Some of those investors would not have been paying any tax at all because of the way they structured those investments,” he said.

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick hit back, saying Perrotet was playing politics.

“Dominic Perrottet is making these statements today because he’s six months out from an election, he’s tanking in the polls and it’s an election that he’s likely to lose,” Mr Dick told reporters in Brisbane.

“This is a bloke who wants to put an annual land tax on every home in New South Wales forever,” Mr Dick told reporters in Brisbane.

“People who buy properties across multiple jurisdictions who avoid paying land tax, currently they get away with it.

“We don’t think that’s fair on people who invest in our state. That’s why we’ve closed this land tax loophole and that’s very important. We want our land tax system in Queensland to be fairer.”

Queensland’s opposition has hit out at the proposed tax which they say will increase rental prices across the state.

“The government’s done no modelling, no impacts, no consultation with anybody and it will push up rents,” opposition leader David Crisafulli said.

“We stand with Queensland renters during the biggest housing crisis they have seen.”

Under the proposal, Queensland would reportedly calculate land tax according to the value of a property holder’s portfolio in Australia.

The changes would apply to anyone with total property holdings across the country of more than $600,000, The Daily Telegraph reports.

NSW has said it would query the constitutional validity of the reform, which alters current laws in Queensland that only tax land held in the state.

“We’re not talking well-off people, here – we’re talking retirees, mum and dad investors, who are being penalised by the Queensland government,” Perrottet said.

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