Grattan Institute

“Stamp duty is the worst tax that any government can have,” says Dominic Perrottet, recently quoted in the ABC. But after talking up stamp duty reform for the past two years, the then NSW Treasurer now Premier Dominic Perrottet’s grand plans ended less with a bang and more with a whimper. The government will allow first home buyers to opt to pay land tax rather than stamp duty. But it falls well short of the kind of reform many were hoping for. In this podcast, Kat Clay and Brendan Coates discuss why stamp duty is such a bad tax and why a land tax would be better, why the NSW government’s efforts to replace one with the other fell short, and what other states should learn from the experience. Donate to Grattan: https://grattan.edu.au/donate