Economy
Land tax: The real losers
When you have a mess, you have to clean it up.
But why did the Land Tax mess occur?
It was a time-bomb set by the Liberals back in ’96.
They never expected Tassie land prices to rise, so they established a progressive increasing-rate system, and then aggregated all properties to make it a wealth tax.
Strange socialist idea for a Liberal party, but true.
So despite Labor having had 11 years to fix it, and despite many warnings, it has waited for the s*** to hit the fan.
Too many other day to day troubles, I guess.
So now, on the fly, Bartlett gives a windfall bonus to shack owners, who will pocket their higher land prices gladly. It won’t mean cheaper shacks for sale, though. It just privatises the public’s ‘economic rent’.
Business owners get a rebate, but if they are leasing the property, they should never have been paying it anyway. The Land Tax should fall on the landowner – that bludger with his feet up in Melbourne or the Gold Coast – not on the hard-working local businessman.
The losers are genuine working Tasmanians who will pay for the rebates through their taxes, and the next generation, who will have to buy their way into higher priced land, whether for a home or a business. But they don’t vote yet, do they?