Page 3774 - Week 12 - Thursday, 21 October 1993
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If the Government wants to come back separately and say, "We wish to impose a $20 document handling fee", they can do that in the same way that they vary all their other fees and charges. They do not have to amend the stamp duties Act to do that. They can simply say in their scales of fees and charges, which are published separately and which are made by ministerial determination, in effect, that they are going to impose a $20 document handling charge. That is a different thing altogether. This is obscuring a handling charge and disguising it as a tax. It is unfair, it is unreasonable and it is inequitable. I do not buy it. I commend my amendment to the members of the Assembly. If they see the sense, the logic and the reason of this, they will reject the Government's proposal and adopt my amendments.
MR MOORE (5.32): Madam Speaker, I think Mr Kaine is quite right when he says that we are really dealing with a fee rather than a tax. It seems to me that this is a fee. In drafting legislation and in giving instructions to Parliamentary Counsel, I suppose we often make decisions about what we call things and how we present things. I think that from a semantic point of view it would have been better had this been referred to as a fee. The reality is that the result is still the same. What is proposed by the Bill is a $20 fee and, in Mr Kaine's term, it is disguised as a tax. I think he is accurate in describing it in that way. However, the important point, as far as I am concerned, is that the result is still the same. I was somewhat taken by some of his arguments. However, looking at the information provided by the Law Society after it was provided to me through the Chief Minister's office, and after considering the arguments presented by Mr Kaine, I am inclined to accept that, whilst it ought to be called a fee, the result is the same. I am prepared to support the Bill as it is. I will not be supporting the amendments put up by Mr Kaine.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.34): Madam Speaker, the Government will be opposing Mr Kaine's amendments. I think the ones under discussion are Nos 2, 4 and 5. As Mr Moore has indicated, the amendment that the Government has proposed in this Bill is an attempt to recover some of the cost of processing the very large number of exempt documents that the Commissioner for ACT Revenue receives. I would refer members to some earlier comments that I had made, where I indicated that in the past year there had been 11,000 of these exempt documents relating to marketable securities alone, stocks and shares - a very large number of documents indeed. Typically, Madam Speaker, exempt transactions are those that involve changes to trust documents resulting from changes to trustees or nominees and transfers of ownership under wills. There has been some concern expressed that transfers of property and shares to charities, which are currently exempt, will now also be dutied at $20, presuming that the Bill is passed. Madam Speaker, while charities would be required to pay the $20 minimum duty, you have to remember that they are not having to pay the duty on these transactions. The ACT community therefore already is heavily subsidising these organisations by not imposing the duty on the transactions. They will be required to pay that $20 minimum only and not the full amount of duty.
I realise that Mr Kaine has made a point about the nomenclature of this particular charge, and I take his point. I do, however, think that it is a matter of semantics. Whether this is referred to as a duty or as a document handling charge, the intention is clearly the same, and that is that by imposing a minimum charge the Government is seeking to recover the very considerable costs of processing exempt documents. That, I believe, is well understood by all members. For that reason I will be opposing Mr Kaine's amendments.
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