The Tasmanian government intends to introduce legislation for a land tax surcharge for foreign persons who own residential investment properties in March 2022 and for it to operate from 1 July 2022.  This is a very short implementation period at the best of times.

This submission calls for a long transitional period – especially for discretionary trusts which may need to alter their trust deeds.  It also calls for the Commissioner to have discretion to exempt a person from the land tax surcharge.

Communications need to be tightly targeted to minimise compliance costs for both land owners and administrators.  The submission suggests how communications can be better targeted to affected land owners by using existing state and local data bases.