Western Australian Government Defends Luxury Land Tax

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

04 October 2001

The Western Australian government is insisting that its controversial 2 per cent luxury land tax on properties with a land value in excess of A$1 million will not damage Labor's chances in the upcoming federal election, such as they are. Eric Ripper, Acting Premier of the WA government, says the tax will raise around $10 million per year but will only affect about 900 properties in the region which represents less than one quarter of one per cent of the population.

Argued Mr Ripper: 'On the other side of the political ledger we've got a government which put a tax on everyone's power bill, on everyone's gas bill and on pensioner's funerals. Now who would you vote for?'

Earlier this week, federal opposition leader Kim Beazley claimed that he would not introduce a similar tax at federal level if Labor won the election, but he said that he understood the WA government's need to impose the tax as it would help the government to dig itself out of a financial hole and was therefore 'not hugely unreasonable.'

There has been some speculation in the Australian media that the luxury land tax will prove to be a huge money spinner for the WA government with the number of properties with land over $1 million set to treble in the next three years.

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