Page 1428 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
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... if the Commissioner is satisfied that by reason of the death or illness of any person or on some other compassionate ground the owner has a compelling reason for not occupying the parcel for a longer period than 12 months -
that is a ground for exemption. If that is not a discretion, what is? Mr Kaine has simply not read the Act or, if he has, he has deliberately misconstrued what is in it. It is also the case that the commissioner may, in cases of hardship, allow people time to pay. That is another discretion he has. But he has to know, in the first place, what are people's grounds for claiming such hardship.
Mr Kaine continually asserted that people had no right to appeal. That is simply untrue. People are able to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The cost of that is some $240, which is much less than, say, a legal process would be. If people are faced with a land tax bill which they consider is completely unjustified, that is a course of action that is clearly open to them, and it is open to them at a fairly modest cost. I feel that Mr Kaine has deliberately misinterpreted what is in the land tax Act voted on by the Assembly last year.
I want to go through fairly briefly the changes that were made last week by the Government. These changes were made in response to community concerns. Having reviewed the correspondence and the personal representations made to me, I am prepared to review a piece of legislation and make adjustments where that is necessary - unlike Mr Kaine, whose position remains that he would simply do away with this tax. He does not think that these investors ought to be taxed at all. The changes I have made I will reiterate because I think members opposite have only the sketchiest knowledge of what they are.
First of all, we have introduced an amnesty period to allow property to be transferred from a private company into the shareholders' own names. Where that occurs it will not attract stamp duty, providing that certain conditions are met. I think that is a significant concession. We have also allowed an exemption from land tax for property which is occupied as a principal place of residence by someone who has a life tenancy under a will. Again, I think that will meet a number of the problems of constituents that have been raised with me, and members opposite agree with me on that.
A further change we have made is to extend the current exemption that is available to people compulsorily transferred for employment reasons to include the spouse of an owner. Quite clearly, there has been the occasional anomalous situation where, say, a wife owns the house and it is the husband who is transferred, or vice versa. We do not want to interfere in those kinds of domestic arrangements. I think it would be anomalous to do so, and therefore we have extended that exemption.
Finally, the payment date for land tax this year has been put back from 15 August to 15 September. I have done that deliberately in order to provide some relief for land tax payers who might be facing cash flow problems because 15 August, as I am sure all members know, is the due date for rates payments as well. We have moved the payment dates a month apart, and I think that will ease people's cash flow problems, if they have any. In the future, the Government will be ensuring that the dates for payment of rates and land tax do not coincide. I think that is a reasonable thing to do, to ensure that people do not get hit with two bills at the one time.
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