Landholders fight tax

By Melissa Grant
LANDHOLDERS against a proposed land tax will protest outside Parliament House today (Wednesday) amid concerns the State Government will reap millions of dollars from divorces and inheritances.
Those in Melbourne’s south-east set to be affected by the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution scheme recently formed their own committee and will join others from Victoria’s north-west at 1pm to rally against the proposal.
Michael Hocking, president of the committee, said landholders in the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) and those in its investigation corridor were forming a “united front” against the land tax.
“Anyone who stands to lose the value of their property should be interested,” he said.
The State Government’s Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC) scheme applies to all land that was brought into the UGB in or after 2005.
A flat rate of $80,000 per hectare is applied to land brought into the boundary in 2005 and $95,000 for land brought in or after 2009.
The Growth Areas Authority (GAA) chief executive Peter Seamer recently said the tax wouldn’t apply to land inheritances or to farmers who wanted to retire on their land.
“Land that simply transferred as part of inheritance after a death in the family will not attract the contribution under the draft legislation,” he said.
But Mr Hocking had reservations about the tax being triggered upon the sale, saying it would affect some inheritances.
“Everyone knows if they have a will it may require the land to be sold and assets divided,” he said.
“And break-ups are not always amicable – courts may order the property to be sold and the money to be divided up.”
Mr Hocking said there was a more equitable way of applying the charge.
“Remove the trigger from the transfer of the title and apply it to whoever is granted development approval,” he said.
“That way people’s borrowing capacity and inheritance and divorce will be unaffected.”
The GAIC charge doesn’t apply to land parcels that are less than or equal to 0.41 hectares.
Mr Seamer said the charge was being put in place to reap some of the “windfall profits” made when farming land was rezoned for urban development and to help meet the cost of infrastructure in Melbourne’s growth areas.
Mr Seamer said an independent market evaluation recently commissioned by the GAA showed that the value of rural land inside the urban growth boundary in the shire of Cardinia was three times greater than the value of rural land adjacent to the UGB.
However, landholders in Officer have previously labelled the proposed scheme a “rip off”, saying they would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if they wanted to sell up.
“There are people that are going to be devastated by this,” Mr Hocking said.
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