Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Land tax

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (18:01): (1930) My matter in the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Treasurer, and it concerns taxation arrangements—complex land tax arrangements—as they affect a particular family, Dr Xioa Wang and Zuxia Yu. This is a family in Toorak that had a property in Camberwell. They sold that. They built a new addition on the Toorak property, so there is some complexity on timing and the fact they were not living in this property whilst it was being built. There is an additional complexity with this land tax in that Dr Wang—with his wife and his two young adult children who live with him—is a doctor, a rural doctor, so he has a home base here in Melbourne but also spends a lot of time in country Victoria providing support for rural communities through his doctoring services. I would have thought that was something that would have been supported by government, but this has left him in a very difficult place because the land tax that has been assessed by the State Revenue Office (SRO) has not taken account of the fact that he is somebody who goes to country Victoria, to different places, but this is his base here.

The land tax arrangements do not appear to have adequate flexibility to recognise that fact nor the difficulty of him rebuilding the property and in that process needing some recognition that although he was paying land tax elsewhere, he now has been clobbered with land tax. It is a big bill—$280 000—it is actually a massive bill. He is in dispute with the SRO. That is heading for a tribunal hearing in June this year, but he has in the meantime received threatening emails from debt collectors inspired by the SRO.

What I am wanting the Treasurer to do here is to, either via the commissioner at the SRO or some other mechanism, have a proper and fair review. Is this an unintended consequence of the interplay of the land tax legislation? I mean, the truth is I would have thought that it was entirely proper for a base of this type for a rural doctor, with his family living there at the same time, to not be clobbered with a full land tax hit, and a retrospective land tax hit. This has been cruel and, it seems, overly harsh. In that sense I am asking the Treasurer to ensure that the SRO looks at this fairly— (Time expired)