NSW scraps mortgage duty

NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian says the abolition of three state taxes will save businesses more than $400 million a year, totalling around $1.8 billion over the budget and forward estimates.

“We will abolish duty on business mortgages and unlisted securities, and transfer duty on non-real business assets as we said we would,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“Last year alone, there were more than 250,000 transactions or hits to business from these three taxes,” she said.

“During the 2015 state election, the Labor Party said it would defer the scrapping of these taxes indefinitely to partially pay for its infrastructure projects. Labor just doesn’t get it and they never will. If you believe in creating jobs and economic growth, you must support and enable business to operate efficiently.”

Ms Berejiklian told parliament that housing affordability remained “one of the biggest challenges of our time” and the government had “worked hard to deal with the pent up demand for housing stock left by those opposite.”

“As a result, housing approvals are around record highs, with annual home approvals now above 70,000 dwellings,” she said.

“This is more than double the number of approvals averaged by Labor in each year of its last term.”

Ms Berejiklian said figures showed the state’s construction pipeline was continuing to grow and more housing stock was on the way.

“This government has always said the key to affordability is supply and already, NSW new residential construction is growing at around 23 per cent – a rate of growth unrivalled by any other state,” she said.

The treasurer first flagged the changes to business taxes last week and also announced that foreign investor surcharges on stamp duty and land tax on residential real estate would be introduced.

[Related: CEO slams 'greedy' govt stance on foreign investors]