Page 1810 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 19 August 1992
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either, but they have had to pay the land tax. That is absurd. Those in that situation will not have to pay land tax under this amendment, and nor should they have to, provided always that there is no rent being received from either of the houses in question. Family companies providing houses for families where there is no commercial benefit to the owner will not, and should not, have to pay land tax either. They will not have to, after this amendment is adopted. We do not believe that this will provide any loophole for executives, for example, receiving a non-salary benefit from subsidised rent, as there is in that case a demonstrable commercial gain being sought. They would be excluded from the exemption on that ground.
Section 22B subsection (1) paragraph (a) will be broadened to allow the commissioner greater discretion to determine bona fide absence for work-related purposes. At the present time, even people that are absent from Canberra because of their work are being levied the land tax. There has been an incorrect interpretation. The commissioner is saying, "You left Canberra voluntarily. Your employer did not require you to go some place else". There is a classic case of one woman who went to Adelaide because she could not get a job in Canberra. The alternative was to stay here and be unemployed. She went to Adelaide to get a job and earn an income. She left her children in the house. The Government is levying her land tax. That is patently absurd; it is unreasonable.
The Act does not require, in its present form, that a person leave Canberra because the employer requires that they do. It merely says that absence from Canberra for work-related reasons exempts you from the tax, but that is not the way it is being interpreted and that is not the way it is being implemented. It is a gross misinterpretation of the Act, in my view. We are providing, by amendment, the specific circumstances under which an exemption will be granted or under which the commissioner can exercise some discretion, which he does not have at the moment because the Act is inflexible.
Amendments to section 22C of the Act will require the Commissioner for Revenue to provide information to lessees about this tax and the process for claiming exemptions. This will leave no doubt as to who is liable for the tax and who is not. This year, no notice of any kind went to any landowner explaining the circumstances under which they were liable to pay this tax. If people do not know that they are liable for the tax, how can they be expected to pay it? A point of view that has been strongly put to me suggests that a lot of people are not paying the tax, because they do not know they are obligated to pay it. They do not know the circumstances under which they must, so they are not paying it. Until the Government goes to them and says, "You are a landowner, and these are the circumstances under which you are obligated to pay the tax", they will not know.
On the other hand, there are probably people paying, and coughing up the money, because somebody has said, "You are liable for the tax", when, in fact, they are not. They pay because they do not know what the grounds are for seeking an exemption. So the obligation will be placed on the commissioner to do what he did last year when the tax was first introduced - send out with their rates notices a little piece of paper that says, "These are the circumstances under which you will be liable for this tax". Then people know what their obligations are, and they can meet them. Alternatively, they can lodge an appeal and seek a waiver or an exemption.
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