South Australia’s Liberal party says it will phase out stamp duty by 2041, if elected in March, but the premier has labelled the promise as “one of the most reckless, dangerous policy announcements” he has ever seen.<\/p>\n
Opposition leader Vincent Tarzia said his long-term policy would initially start with “instant” relief by removing stamp duty for first home buyers purchasing existing homes valued up to $1 million \u2013 a commitment he previously made in June.<\/p>\n
He said after five years, the Liberals would begin adjusting the brackets of stamp duty, with the plan then to totally abolish the tax within 15 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Stamp duty is an extremely inefficient tax,” Mr Tarzia said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It makes it harder for young people to get into homes and it makes it even harder for old people to then downsize.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“These changes will be gradual, over the long term this is only good news.”<\/p>\n
Mr Tarzia said the “ambitious” policy would make South Australia one of the most competitive jurisdictions in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This is a bold and visionary move.”<\/p>\n
“My vision is one where the government delivers the highest value to taxpayers of anywhere in the world, while remaining in the background and not becoming the story.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The proposed policy would begin with abolishing stamp duty for first home buyers on existing builds.\u00a0 (ABC News: Steve Keen)<\/p>\n
Costings unclear<\/p>\n
Mr Tarzia said stamp duties on financial and capital transactions bring in $1.6 billion in revenue each year, but ruled out creating any new taxes under his leadership to replace it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In terms of any changes, in terms of costings, they’ll be there for everyone to see but we’re not cutting any frontline services,” Mr Tarzia said.<\/p>\n
“This whole notion that you’ve got to cut things in order to grow the pie is just a false argument, what we want to do is grow the economic pie.”<\/p>\n
Speaking ahead of Mr Tarzia officially releasing his policy, Premier Peter Malinauskas told ABC Radio Adelaide that “by the Liberal’s own numbers” the abolition of stamp duty would equate to $2.3 billion in revenue lost each year, before revising it down to $1.6 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Let’s put that into a bit of context \u2013 that’s [$2.3 billion] the entirety of the South Australian police force gone, not once, but twice.<\/p>\n
“They’re going to take the equivalent of the entirety of the South Australian police budget out of the budget. They’re going to take it all out for a stamp duty policy that doesn’t build one new home for a first home buyer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I don’t think we should underestimate the seriousness of what’s being proposed here.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Peter Malinauskas says abolishing stamp duty would take billions of dollars in revenue out of the state budget. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n
When asked by a journalist whether his costings were inaccurate, Mr Tarzia said all of the details would be revealed in the lead up to the election “just like Labor did”.<\/p>\n
“The $2.3b that you are alluding to perhaps is in relation to other fees and charges, but when we’re talking about stamp duty, that’s a clear $1.6b,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s clear that with good financial management, this money certainly will be able to be recouped.”<\/p>\n
‘Reckless, dangerous policy’\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under the Labor government’s current policy, first home owners who buy or build a new house are exempt from paying stamp duty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Malinauskas said the Liberal’s proposal would make it even harder for young people looking to buy their first home. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“Under the Liberal’s policy they’ll now be competing with every single other person who already owns a home in the market which actually takes away a first home buyer’s advantage,” he said.<\/p>\n
“What causes the housing crisis is a lack of supply, we need more homes, not less.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
South Australian first home buyers are exempt from paying stamp duty on new builds under Labor’s policy. (ABC News: Keana Naughton)<\/p>\n
Mr Malinauskas likened Mr Tarzia’s policy to former UK prime minister Liz Truss’ mini-budget in 2022, which included\u00a0\u00a345b ($76b) in\u00a0unfunded tax cuts.<\/p>\n
“He’s promising a Liz Truss-type magic pudding here where you can just cut revenue to the tune of billions of dollars and then magically money comes from somewhere else, which of course is a complete fallacy,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This is probably one of the most reckless, dangerous policy announcements I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
“This sort of reckless stuff, I fear, would only do intergenerational damage to the state.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Australia’s Liberal party says it will phase out stamp duty by 2041, if elected in March, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,24805,154624,101726,1124,61059,9804,105700],"class_list":{"0":"post-263844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-peter-malinauskas","12":"tag-sa-liberal","13":"tag-sa-politics","14":"tag-south-australia","15":"tag-stamp-duty","16":"tag-state-election","17":"tag-vincent-tarzia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}