My first instinct is “yes” but then I thought about it and I think it’s just going to exacerbate the short-stay problem unless combined with other measures.
Remove negative gearing and the capital gains tax concessions then let’s talk other measures.
Just tax land…
A flat land tax is a bit rough. Take some 80-year-old pensioner living in a simple house in suburbs. They’ve lived there for 60 years, only that suburb is now gentrified and a blanket 1% tax on the house is now a $10k/year tax bill they need to come up with (Just making up example of 1% of $1 Million property) just to stay in their own home.
This is a tough problem to figure out. I’m glad it isn’t my job. Whatever the solution is, I’m sure it’s more complicated that just blanket-taxing land. There’d need to be some exemptions to address this (which wouldn’t be that uncommon) and other scenarios I’m too dumb to think of. And whatever exemptions are applied, would naturally lead to people exploiting them as loopholes.
Fuck a flat land tax idea. On top of GST, Income Tax, Rates and interest (plus stamp duty), it’s just a money grab.
I mean like do you have an alternative to taxes? The whole point of this is you’d pay less after the switch.
Honestly, I’ve been on this rock long enough to know a new tax goes on the the rest don’t come off.
