Tuesday, 4 February 2025

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (19:20): (979) My adjournment this evening is for the Treasurer in the other place, and the action I seek is that she revises the State Revenue Office land tax assessment processes and procedures. I bring this to the attention of the Treasurer tonight because I received an email today. This is not unusual – I get a lot of phone calls on land tax – but I received an email today from Emmaly Gridley, and I will just state this. She states:

We bought a property in Moe in 2020 that was valued at $440,000 on the Land Tax Assessment Notice for the following 3 years.

In 2024 it was stated that the value had jumped to $1.6Million so the land tax bill for that year was just over $20K. We filed an objection which has taken almost 12 months to finalise. The independent valuation came back that it was worth $770,000 so our 2024 assessment was amended.

We have now received a new assessment for 2025 and the valuation is now at $2.3Million –

that is a 300 per cent increase –

with the land tax bill over $30K.

I bring this to the attention of the Treasurer because this is not unusual. This is happening quite often. The sceptic in me may think that the State Revenue Office is overvaluing properties to create more taxes. That could be the sceptic in me. But what I would like to do is ask the Treasurer to revise how they are doing these valuations, because I find it very hard to believe that an independent valuation that puts a property at $770,000 can increase to $2.3 million in a 12-month period. I assume Emmaly and her husband David, I think it is, will probably appeal this new valuation. But they have to get this right because it is causing a lot of grief within the community and definitely in my community, where land tax assessments seem to be out of control. I am asking the Treasurer to please look at this issue and let us get some sort of consistency to valuations – not what it is at the moment.