Page 2828 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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This amendment matches linking the threshold by which entities are linked with the threshold required to trigger landholder duty, which is 50 per cent in the bill. The amendment also improves consistency with the ACT’s tracing provisions with New South Wales. It is a minor and technical amendment.
Amendment agreed to.
Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
Duties Amendment Bill 2012 (No 2)
[Cognate bill:
Rates and Land Tax Legislation Amendment Bill 2012]
Debate resumed from 29 March 2012, on motion by Mr Barr:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR SPEAKER: I understand it is the wish of the Assembly to debate this bill cognately with executive business order of the day No 4, Rates and Land Tax Legislation Amendment Bill 2012. That being the case I remind members that in debating order of the day No 3, executive business, they may also address their remarks to executive business order of the day No 4.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.14): The opposition will be supporting the passage of the Duties Amendment Bill (No 2), and I thank the Treasurer’s office for providing a briefing on this and the Rates and Land Tax Legislation Amendment Bill 2012.
The principle in this bill is to remove an anomaly in the application of duty on transactions involving subleases. The Treasurer, in his presentation speech, set out the history of the abolition of duty on the transfer of non-core business assets and on the creation of short-term subleases. However, ad valorem duty has been retained on the transfer of subleases to prevent transactions from being structured so as to avoid the payment of conveyance duty.
The anomaly which has arisen relates to any business goods which might be transferred when a sublease is transferred. The transfer of a sublease will mean that the business that has been operating from the premises will be able to continue operating and do so under the terms and conditions of the existing sublease. Of course, in transferring a sublease the business owner would also wish to transfer any business goods which are used in the business.
As the Treasurer noted, some typical goods which would be classified as “business goods” would include kitchen equipment, fridges, ovens or indeed coffee machines. At present, when a short-term sublease of a business that is an ongoing concern is transferred and that business involves the use of any business goods, the duty on the sublease would be only $20. But duty would be charged on the full value of any associated business goods, as these goods are associated with a dutiable transaction.
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