Farmers will 'revolt' against a new property tax

That's the reaction of NSW Farmers to the planned NSW property tax that the main farm body sees as just a weight on farmers and intrinsically just an extra tax take.

NSW Farmers president James Jackson says all the economic modelling the association has seen shows it is "completely false" that the introduction of a property tax would have a neutral tax effect on agriculture.

He says he's been told in talks with the NSW Government that farming would not be included in the tax overhaul, but "doesn't have this in writing".

Based on feedback from meetings across the state, there would be a widespread farm revolt from the 30,000 Farmers' members against the property tax if the NSW Government moved ahead with the plan, he says.

The tax ignored the fundamentals of farming and the long tenure of farms and such a tax would only favour intensive operations such as feedlots.

"We don't see stamp duty as ideal, but with property tax it will be out of the frying pan and into the fire," he said. "It's essentially worse, it's not neutral, its accretive. They presented it as a neutral tax, but that is not correct. Over 60 years it will take a lot more than stamp duty. The total tax take will increase and we cannot abide by that."

"The main problem is it is a recurrent tax, a tax you could avoid by simply not buying property. The tax will be placed on the title in perpetuity and will only recognise fixed costs and not all the lumpy income farmers get. It is really a tax designed for urban dwellers and it doesn't work for ag and we don't think ag will be included."

The other main issue was that property tax would be based on a rateable value, entirely different from stamp duty, based on market value.

"This will only help businesses like a feedlot who have only a small geographical footprint. We've found through our modelling that it is actually taxing different things - that is the fundamental problem with it."

"It will be a shift in the tax take and that will be fundamentally unfair, from market value to rateable value."

It's much better for someone to borrow money over 12 years and pay off the stamp duty after purchasing a property, he said.

It is believed the Coalition is divided on the introduction of the tax for ag.

NSW Farmers commissioned Tamworth-based consultants Agripath to look at the property tax.

Agripath's report said that going to a property tax system would not benefit farmers in the long-run as most farms were held over several decades. It concluded it would be better to pay the stamp duty upfront, as any benefit would exhaust after about 18 years.

"Across all groups the initial transaction cost advantage of opting into the land tax scheme will exhaust between 15 years and 18 years from contract date or approximately midway through the nominal tenure of property ownership in NSW. The enduring nature of the imposed land tax will result in disadvantage to all potential land transfers reflected in the group data set. Investment considerations are likely to be different for institutional farmland investors with specific return on capital objectives and family based intergenerational farm operators," Agripath found.

"The scope of the anticipated disadvantage remains uncertain due to the lack of guidance from NSW Treasury concerning the imposition of any flat rate component of the tax structure and the introduction of imposed opt-in value threshholds, in the consultation paper."