Vic: Land tax reforms aren't working: Doyle

AAP General News (Australia)
02-14-2006
Vic: Land tax reforms aren't working: Doyle

MELBOURNE, Feb 14 AAP - Land taxes have soared again for small Victorian businesses
despite promises by the state government to rein in increases driven by runaway valuations,
the opposition says.

As assessments begin to arrive, property owners would be faced with an increases of
an average 20 per cent on their valuations, Opposition Leader Robert Doyle said today.

But the government says any increase is simply a reflection of a rise in the value
of a properties.

Mr Doyle spoke to reporters at Dennisons Dry Cleaners in suburban Camberwell, where
owner Rowan Woolcock has put his business up for sale, citing the increase in land tax.

Mr Woolcock said his land tax in 1999 was $813 and this year his bill was more than $19,000

"I don't want to sell," he said.

"But the land tax has forced me to make a decision that I didn't want."

Mr Doyle said the government needed to properly reform land tax.

"You need to do valuations on the real value of the property, not its highest and best
use," Mr Doyle said.

"You can't be valuing this property presuming that there is a ten-storey office block
or blocks of flats here.

"There is a viable business here as long as John Brumby (state treasurer) doesn't drive
it out of existence.

Last May, the government announced reforms to land tax - worth $823 million over five
years - that raised the threshold at which owners start paying the tax from $175,000 to
$200,000, and cut rates for 23,000 properties in the middle-bracket valuations between
$750,000 to $2.7 million.

Premier Steve Bracks today told reporters the government had already provided significant
land tax relief and that any rises were due to a rise in property values.

"Land tax is directly related to the value of land, so it really will relate in different
ways to different precincts depending on the land values.

"But what we've cut off is the big jumps, you know, I know there were reports in the
past of some 100, 200 per cent increases. They obviously have not occurred (again) because
we've cut land tax by $823 million."

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KEYWORD: LAND TAX

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