Australia: Tax measures in 2022-2023 budget (Western Australia)

The Western Australia budget for 2022-2023 was presented on 12 May 2022 and includes the following tax proposals.

The budget includes state tax measures to support housing for lower-income individuals and households.

• A 50% land tax concession would commence on 1 July 2023 and apply to new eligible “build-to-rent” developments. This mirrors similar concessions that New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia have announced or introduced.
• From 1 June 2022, the existing off-the-plan transfer duty rebate would be amended. Eligible purchasers would receive a full transfer duty rebate for a dwelling valued at less than $500,000 and a rebate of between 50% and 100% for a dwelling valued between $500,000* and $600,000. The existing 50% rebate would continue to apply to dwellings valued above $600,000. The eligibility period for this rebate would end on 24 October 2023 and the maximum rebate is capped at $50,000.

Other stamp duty changes from 1 July 2022 include:

• The general rate of transfer duty would reduce to the equivalent rate of duty for residential property transactions.
• The residential or business property concession would change to provide a benefit on all eligible transactions up to a value of $200,000.
• The duty on prospecting licences and derivative mining rights in relation to prospecting licences would only apply when the licences or rights are transferred with other dutiable property.

Finally, the Western Australia government announced that from 1 July 2022 it would remove the 2% surcharge that currently applies to land tax paid in installments.

The progressive payroll tax scale introduced in the 2017-2018 budget is set to end in June 2023 as planned. Subject to any changes announced in next year’s budget, this will see a return to a flat rate of payroll tax of 5.5% from 1 July 2023. This will benefit employers with Australia-wide payrolls exceeding $100 million and $1.5 billion with current marginal rates of 6% and 6.5% respectively.

From 1 July 2022, the quarterly payroll tax return lodgement (filing) threshold would increase from $100,000 to $150,000. This means that employers with an annual liability of up to $150,000 will have the option to choose to pay quarterly (rather than monthly). This is designed to provide cashflow benefits and reduce administrative processes and may benefit employers with annual payroll tax wages between $2.6 million and $3.3 million that are currently required to file monthly returns.

Payroll tax concessions: No new payroll tax concessions were announced in the budget, but hospitality businesses with annual wages between $4 million and $20 million may be eligible for a three-month payroll tax waiver. This was announced as part of the Level 2 Business Assistance Package in March 2022 and is designed to support businesses affected by public health and social measures. Eligible hospitality businesses must have experienced at least a 40% drop in turnover for any four-week period between 1 January 2022 and 30 April 2022, relative to a comparable period in 2021.

Compliance activity: RevenueWA is working on the rollout of the “Lodgement and Payment Compliance Project” that applies business intelligence and advanced analytics to identify taxpayers suspected of non-compliance in relation to various obligations, including payroll tax.

Read a May 2022 report [PDF 664 KB] prepared by the KPMG member firm in Australia