Home buyers will soon be required to send the Australian Taxation Office a cheque for GST on their new dwelling, a surprise change that has been criticised by property and tax specialists as unworkable.
The budget revealed that as of mid-2018, GST will need to be paid to the ATO on “newly constructed residential premises and new subdivisions” immediately on settlement.
It’s a task that is traditionally done by developers when lodging routine business activity statements.
The new remittance arrangement is expected to result in the collection of $650 million in GST revenue over four years.
The budget papers do not contain any details about how this figure was derived but it implies that the large sums of money are routinely …
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