Help to first home-owners and a blow to foreign investors

The Tax Institute’s Senior Tax Counsel, Professor Robert Deutsch says, “While the changes to NSW stamp duty announced today for first home buyers are a positive step towards helping first homebuyers step onto the property ladder, it remains to be seen how these changes will affect house prices in NSW overall”.

“The changes may fuel demand for housing by first home buyers who will have more money in their pocket to spend. Making it harder for foreign purchasers to buy and own land in NSW with a doubling of the stamp duty surcharge should also assist. However, if the housing supply remains the same, this might neutralise the benefit of these stamp duty changes”, says Professor Deutsch.

“The doubling of the foreign purchaser stamp duty surcharge to 8% and nearly tripling the land tax surcharge to 2% seems to be in line with what we see as a new ‘anti-foreigners’ policy’ trend in revenue laws of late. We saw this feature in the recent Federal Budget and it doesn’t really come as a surprise that the States are following suit”.

ENDS

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