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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 293 ..

Treasurer for bringing this forward and making the system somewhat simpler for people to understand.

MS TUCKER (12.17): As I understand it, the main effect of this bill is to separate the law on rates and on land tax. This is a reflection of the way that these measures have evolved. Rates apply to all properties, as a contribution to basic community services. Land tax applies to properties that are used to make money. The main point of this legislation is to set up a system where it easier to coordinate concessions and exemptions.

The Treasurer presented the Rates Bill 2003 and its companion, the Land Tax Bill 2003, as containing no significant policy changes, and to some extent we are taking this on faith. The Rates Bill repeals and consolidates the different acts that used to cover separately the way rates are set and the way concessions are calculated. It takes some of its authority from the Taxation Administration Act—for instance, the setting of threshold amounts for calculating who must pay rates.

A threshold amount and a fixed charge will be set by the minister by a disallowable instrument rather than being written into the legislation. This will certainly make understanding and, no doubt, administering the law much easier. I hope it will make it easier for the government to consider whatever comes out of the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry into revenue equity and sustainability. It is up to the minister to make regulations to guide the application of concessions, but while the threshold level and fixed proportion is set by disallowable instrument, any concessions are simply notifiable.

Members would be well aware that there has been a call over the past few years for the government to implement a more robust concession scheme. Some aspects of such a scheme would need to be implemented through this legislation. We are still looking forward to seeing and discussing the outcome of the recently completed review of concessions, and hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later.

MS DUNDAS (12.19): The ACT Democrats will be supporting both the Rates Bill and the Land Tax Bill. Simplification of our statute book is a goal that I believe all of us would support. I can see the sense in separating the provisions relating to land tax from those relating to property rates. I can see even greater sense in incorporating the relevant provisions regarding concessions on rates into the bill that determines the amount of rates that are ordinarily payable.

I remain concerned that there is minimal community awareness in relation to the ACT system of land tax, and that includes people who sometimes invest in residential rental properties. That is not something that can be addressed through legislation. But I have heard of a number of stories of people renting out their houses whilst overseas or interstate and then receiving a huge land tax bill that they had not known was on the way. So I think we need to take some additional steps to inform prospective landlords of the tax system to avoid the strain of unanticipated bills.

Although I supported the government’s bill to extend land tax to properties held in trust, I do not support the application of land tax to all properties, particularly as most jurisdictions have a threshold below which this tax does not apply. The government has

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