Senator Victor Boyhan has said the announcement today (Tuesday, October 1) on the Residential Zoned Land Tax (RZLT) as part of Budget 2025 is “is a very disappointing result for farmers”.
Landowners can avail of an exemption from the RZLT in 2025 if they seek to have their land rezoned to reflect the activity they carry out on their land, the government confirmed today.
However, Senator Victor Boyhan said: “The surprise today from Minister for Finance Jack Chambers, is that the Residential Zoned Land Tax is here to stay and that the only compromise is that farmers will be given an exemption in 2025 if they seek to rezone their land, in effect this means to downzone from a valuable residential zoning to agricultural zoning.
“This is a very disappointing result for farmers who fall within the scope of the tax as their land has a dual zoning purpose.”
The senator explained that in “many cases” farmers have leveraged financial loans against the value of the zoned land.
Senator Boyhan said that the collateral of these lands may very well be tied up with the banks because of farm enterprise loans and he believes that it may be “difficult” for some landowners to down zone and “untangle themselves” from their current zoning resulting in some being “forced out of active farming”.
“To advance a land tax on farmers at a rate of 3% on land they are actively farming is totally unjust and potentially could bring some family farms to financial ruin.
“Clearly the government have not backed down, despite the promises that farmers would be satisfied with the consensus that was flagged a few days ago”.
Senator Boyhan has called on the government to move quickly to explain the rationale of the RZLT in simple terms and has called for the publication of the guidelines to be issued to local authorities as a matter of priority.
Boyhan said each of the 31 local authorities will now need to confirm their own land holdings hectares that are zoned residential and agricultural use, as they will have to be quantified and will be liable for the RZLT, which could be very significant for local government finances.