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In this edition of ‘It depends’, senior associate Tom Walrut talks about the recent announcements concerning land tax changes in Queensland. Are the changes happening, what are the takeaways from all this and what should your planning considerations be going forward?
Hi, I’m Tom Walrut and welcome to this week’s edition of it depends where we’ll be discussing the recent announcements concerning the Queensland land tax changes.
In short, no. They have been shelved, or at least the announcement has been that they have been shelved for now.
So, what have we learned from all this? Two things – first and foremost, land tax needs to be at the forefront of all of your structuring considerations, particularly when acquiring assets in Queensland. And the second point is that comparatively in Queensland we have some of the narrowest grouping provisions. So, you really should be expecting some changes to be announced around there in the short to medium term.
So, what should you do going forward? Well, it depends. First things first, for any current structures you’ve got or any current landholdings you’ve got, look to see if you can silo those moving forward. That is, can you restructure? Are there any CGT rollovers to manage any income tax liabilities? Are there any duty concessions or exemptions to manage any duty liabilities as part of that restructure? For new acquisitions, again, implement siloed structures. See if you can implement it with standalone corporate entities. Alternatively, if you’re going to go down the trust route for owning property, bespoke trust deeds to help manage any potential groupings that may or may not arise going forward. And the main point there is off the shelf trust deeds are not going to cut it. You really need to have bespoke deeds which are tailored for the land tax purposes. As always, we’ve got a very friendly team here at CGW so do feel free to give us a call if you have any land tax queries or any other general tax queries at all. Thanks.
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