Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Ministers statements: State Revenue Office

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Treasurer, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Regional Development) (12:45): Today I would like to use my ministers statement to inform the house of the important work of the State Revenue Office. I recently visited the more than 350 wonderful SRO staff who are located in Ballarat. Many SRO employees have several years or decades of service – the average length of service is actually nine years – and their employee satisfaction levels are off the charts, as I discovered when I attended their service awards. Their work is much more than just collecting revenue on behalf of the state. They support and speak to excited first home buyers who are receiving stamp duty concessions and grants, they process off-the-plan concessions, they administer exemptions to victims of family violence and they host seminars to provide public education and expert advice to people who need help navigating the tax system. Last year they assessed over $31 billion of revenue and they answered over 330,000 phone calls and 70,000 emails, with a customer satisfaction level of over 80 per cent.

It is a wonderfully dedicated workforce, and I fully support the work and rulings made by their commissioner. I would like to put the claims that the government’s work-from-home policy will make you liable for land tax to bed. Let me say it very clearly: these claims are categorically false. I would like to assure the house, as I did yesterday, that working from home a few days a week will not make a taxpayer liable for land tax. You need to be conducting substantial business activity. This is confirmed in a ruling on the principal place of residence exemption that was made in 2013 –

David Davis: That is the one I referred to.

Jaclyn SYMES: The policy was brought in by the Liberal government, so I understand that you should know exactly how it works, and I gave you credit for that yesterday. If you are working from home and you are not paying land tax now, you will not be paying land tax under the government’s protections to work from home.