OMG! Victorian State Land Tax 2011-2012

[buster]

I got screwed by Eddie Pameleen from Metropole. I wanted to buy interstate because of concerns about land tax, he said land tax is negligible only like a few hundred dollars, melbourne SE suburbs are tha best place to buy. Got a shock two years later in 2011 to receive a bill for many thousands of dollars for land tax, on top of the increased strata fees, matainence costs, insurance, water and coucil rates as well as falling rent on the property hawked by metropole. The property cost 25k a year to hold and hasnt gone up enough in 4 years to cover stamp duty or one years interest. The Moral of the story is dont be lazy and do your own DD and dont beleive the self appointed leading experts.

 

[lily11]

Kristine, not sure if it is the case in Vic but in SA 1+1=3. A married couple have the chance to hold property together and both individually so they get three tax free thresholds. Sure is an advantage when well down the track.

Gools

Hi Gools, could you elaborate further pls? I am bleeding to death all thanks to land tax

 

[Terry_w]

I got screwed by Eddie Pameleen from Metropole. I wanted to buy interstate because of concerns about land tax, he said land tax is negligible only like a few hundred dollars, melbourne SE suburbs are tha best place to buy. Got a shock two years later in 2011 to receive a bill for many thousands of dollars for land tax, on top of the increased strata fees, matainence costs, insurance, water and coucil rates as well as falling rent on the property hawked by metropole. The property cost 25k a year to hold and hasnt gone up enough in 4 years to cover stamp duty or one years interest. The Moral of the story is dont be lazy and do your own DD and dont beleive the self appointed leading experts.

Or don't take general comments from real estate agents as legal advice.

 

[Deltaberry]

In Victoria, it is always important to set your holdings in different trust structures. The additional surcharge on a trust is only $3-5k and the cost of operating one is probably less than $500 per year.

As we didn't know this (or didn't get good advice many years ago), one of our companies has millions of dollars of land value and we pay over $100k in land tax per annum on that company alone. If we had structured things correctly, it'll save us around $50k per annum in land tax. However it's too late to change, because to separate the entities I'll probably have to pay stamp duty of over $500k.

Like posters above, we got lazy and used incompetent lawyers and accountants who we used when my folks started 50 years ago. When we grew bigger we continued to stick with them, even though we were probably too big for them at that point as we generated and continue to generate probably 90% of their firm's revenue.