I noted in my News page on 1 December 2008 that one of the outcomes of the NSW government's mini budget delivered in November 2008 was slugging an extra impost on property transfer transactions by increasing the lodgment fees for property transfers from $92 to $184! I believe that whilst we don't like price increases, most people accept that they're a fact of life - it happens!
In this case, it was the scale of the increase that appeared disproportionate, so I thought it would be an interesting exercise to compare this increase with previous transfer lodgment fees and increases.
The list below shows the lodgement fees that applied for most dealings, including transfers, from July 2003 to January 2009. The 3rd 'column' shows the rough percentage increase over the previous fee, rounded up.
July 2003 - $64
July 2004 - $75 - 17%
July 2005 - $77 - 3%
July 2006 - $79 - 2%
July 2007 - $90 - 14%
July 2008 - $92 - 2%
Jan 2009 - $184 - 100%
It's fair to say however, that in this last round of fee changes there haven't been lodgement fee increases across the whole range of fees. I'm no actuary, but I wonder if another option that could've been adopted is to increase all fees slightly, thus softening their impact, rather than targeting only select categories for the huge increase, whilst others remain unchanged.
I'm not going to speculate. Like I said, it's been an interesting exercise.
In this case, it was the scale of the increase that appeared disproportionate, so I thought it would be an interesting exercise to compare this increase with previous transfer lodgment fees and increases.
The list below shows the lodgement fees that applied for most dealings, including transfers, from July 2003 to January 2009. The 3rd 'column' shows the rough percentage increase over the previous fee, rounded up.
July 2003 - $64
July 2004 - $75 - 17%
July 2005 - $77 - 3%
July 2006 - $79 - 2%
July 2007 - $90 - 14%
July 2008 - $92 - 2%
Jan 2009 - $184 - 100%
It's fair to say however, that in this last round of fee changes there haven't been lodgement fee increases across the whole range of fees. I'm no actuary, but I wonder if another option that could've been adopted is to increase all fees slightly, thus softening their impact, rather than targeting only select categories for the huge increase, whilst others remain unchanged.
I'm not going to speculate. Like I said, it's been an interesting exercise.
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