Page 2291 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 15 September 1992
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The new provision that the Government intends to put in place will create more problems than it solves. This is not an answer; it is a bureaucratic reflex action that ignores analysis of our present state of affairs, our ongoing needs and the nature and justice of complaints from some of our citizens. The Government's amendment will propose a more rigid criterion than did the original Act. The Government is tightening its legislation, setting aside its own claims to social justice.
This niggardly tax collector mentality is unfortunately not confined to the consideration of exemptions for absences for employment reasons. The instalment payments, which I agree with, come at a real price under the Government's approach. A significant cost will be imposed on those taxpayers opting to use this method of payment because an unstated "additional rate of tax" will be levied on those people who choose to use the instalment system. I imagine that the rate will be set to recover as much as possible of the additional cost and forgone interest that the Government estimates is involved with instalment payments.
One could argue that that is a reasonable basis if you accept a graduated tax as being a reasonable thing in the first place. But it is a punitive provision to be imposed on those least able to pay. Why would anybody adopt an instalment payment plan if they had the money up front and could afford to pay it? Those who have the money will make the payment up front; they will not be subjected to this higher rate of land tax that the Government is providing for those who cannot afford to pay up front.
Hopefully, Madam Speaker, if the Government insists on going ahead with this, the Treasury cost estimate of $600,000 will not be used as the basis for decisions, because that estimate is, frankly, wrong. Estimates from sources able to calculate the cost on the basis of residential land tax, rather than an aggregate of both residential and commercial tax, put the figure closer to $200,000 a year. So, if the Government uses its figure of $600,000 it is becoming even more punitive than before. If other people can do the sums, then perhaps the Government ought to do its sums again.
Furthermore, Madam Speaker, in making instalment payments available, which the Government said only a month ago that it would not do, it has failed to carry out its promise of "ensuring that the dates of payment of rates and of land tax do not coincide". That is what the Chief Minister said only a month ago. Again the Chief Minister appears to have been directed by her bureaucrats. I recommend that the assurance given by Ms Follett on 11 August on this point be put into the legislation. The provision of separate dates in section 4 of the principal Act can be effected by reference to the relevant amendments in our Bill - a very simple amendment.
Madam Speaker, I will move such an amendment and oppose the penalty on instalments when we come to the detail stage - not to benefit big business, as the Chief Minister has claimed, but to relieve the financial burden which will now fall on those average income householders who must now pay the tax on the properties they are using to generate income, if the Government has its way. It is not the big businessmen who are going to have this burden put to them; it is going to be the smaller owner. Big business will pay tax in a lump sum, more than likely, because their cash flows are larger and they are more capable of
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