Page 4784 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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mind. Some people will fall into hardship through no fault of their own. Some people will not check the revenue office website as often as they should to keep an eye on whether they are paying the right amount of tax. The question as to how often you should is an interesting one. Some people will get poor advice from financial professionals. Tax absolutely needs to be collected, but everything the revenue office does also needs to be done with care and sympathy.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (4.09): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting this bill, and I thank Ms Le Couteur for taking the call earlier. The most significant change made by this bill is the attempt to fix the issues created when the land tax was extended to vacant properties. The Canberra Liberals voted against this change. Since then the unintended consequences we expressed concerns about have come to pass.
According to the Chief Minister’s own tabling speech, more than 400 waivers and act of grace payments have been granted, totalling around $270,000. It has taken more than 18 months for this problem to be rectified and we are looking at around 20 waivers or act of grace payments a month.
This has affected many Canberrans. The Canberra Liberals have gone in to bat for people who have been affected by this issue, people who have gone through the objections process, pointed out that they should not have been charged and were still refused a waiver. On top of the costs of a new property, on top of the stress of moving, people have had the added pressure of trying to find the money to pay a tax that they should not have been charged for. It really was a gouge; it brought a lot of stress to a lot of people, and the government really should be apologising. We are glad that this will finally be addressed today. However, we believe that it should have been a higher priority for the government, and it should have occurred earlier.
Many of the other changes in this bill are minor or technical in nature, including extending existing powers to other schemes that were inadvertently overlooked in previous bills, and allowing other powers to be exercised through determinations.
I would like to note that changes made to definitions through legislation last year will now revert to what they were previously, that is, the legislation that the Chief Minister put forward last year is now pretty much being repealed. They got it wrong. I am pleased that they at least admit it. The government should be careful when proposing definitional changes, because when definitions change in tax law, it can have unintended consequences, and that is exactly what happened here. The only difference is that the Canberra Liberals pointed it out.
People have a civic responsibility to pay their taxes, but the ACT government should not make it harder for people to understand what their tax obligations are. There should not be any hint of entrapment when it comes to the taxation system in the territory. Tax law is already complex enough. We need to ensure that all the definitions are simple, consistent and easy to understand. Canberrans should not need to spend hours combing through legislation or reading case law to figure out whether they have a land tax liability or not. This is wrong. Tax policy should be able to be
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