We have a bit of a problem in Victoria, we've got a brand-new tax. Now, you mightn't have heard of this, and it could be a big worry if you're a property owner. It's not a new tax, but it's been expanded so much that it's now going to catch hundreds, thousands more properties. This is called the Vacant Residential Land Tax, and new legislation came in only in mid-December, but it applies this year.

In this short video, I talk about what this means and the exemptions that might apply to you.

To help you Millens have prepared a Vacant Land Tax Guide to get it - click here

Ross Millen:

Hi. Some people have asked me, "What are the current changes that are going to be made by the state government to land tax and also this thing called vacant land tax?" So it hasn't been passed into law yet, but it probably will be, and it's all going to come into force from the 1st of January next year. Now, the first thing about land tax is that, of course, when you buy and sell property that's got land tax on it, it's normally adjusted like rates. Now it won't be able to be adjusted. So if you've got a property with a lot of land tax on it, you won't be able to ask the purchaser to pay some of it. So bear that in mind when you're setting the price at which you're willing to sell the property. Most residential properties that are principal places of residence don't have land tax, so that's not an issue. But commercial and other properties or investment properties could have land tax and you might end up actually getting less from your sale than you expected.

The other thing is vacant land. Now to date, there's been very few properties that have been assessed for this, but the government under a lot of pressure about opening land up for development, is going to start expanding the properties that are subject to this vacant land tax of 1% and not of the unimproved value, but the capital value of the property. Of course, if it's vacant land, well presumably there's nothing built on it, that won't be a problem. But it's going to be an additional state tax that you're going to have to pay if you've got undeveloped residential vacant land.

So whether you've got properties like that, you want to check whether they're going to be subject to this tax, what are the strategies you can follow to make sure that you won't be subject to the tax or whether you need to dispose of these properties or to build something on them. Contact us. We're here to help, we can explain to you what the changes are going to be. So I'm Ross Millen from Millens, give us a call, we can explain to you what the new state taxes on land are and how they're going to affect you. Thanks.

Hi. I realized the other day that some of our clients don't understand if they're entitled to an exemption for stamp duty when they buy a property. This came about because we had a husband and wife purchase a property, and naturally they wanted it in both of their names, that's the normal thing. And we inquired and we found out that the wife had never owned a property before, she was a first home buyer. And so we pointed out that if they bought it together they wouldn't qualify for the first home buyer's exemption or concession, whereas if they just bought it in the wife's name, then they would get that, and then later on a husband, or in this case the wife, can transfer the property free of duty to the husband and wife jointly without any further stamp duty. So we were able to save our clients quite a lot of money and they didn't have to pay the duty.

So there are lots of exemptions and concessions you can apply for. Pensioners can get an exemption. Also, if you're transferring a property out of a trust over to beneficiary of the trust, provided you tick all the boxes, you can get that stamp duty exempt. We've also done farm transfers where a property is coming out of a partnership or a trust, or some other structure like that, out to the actual farmer, and in that case there are also exemptions. So don't pay too much duty. If you're in doubt, give us all the details, we can analyze the situation for you, and we can let you know whether you're entitled to stamp duty exemptions when you purchase properties.

So I'm Ross Millen from Millens, and if you've got any questions about buying property or stamp duty concessions or exemptions, don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you.

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