Many Australian property owners face higher land tax bills - and every New South Wales property will have its value re-assessed - after an Ombudsman's report attacked a culture of dodgy valuations and cost cutting which has resulted in 650,000 properties being under-valued.
Thursday, October 13th 2005, 7:39AM
by The Landlord
Despite widespread criticism that the Valuer General had routinely inflated land values, the report actually found 80 per cent of errors were linked to properties being under-valued.
About 35 per cent of 2.4million valuations investigated contained errors more than 15 per cent outside a proper valuation.
However, the report may trigger a windfall for the cash-strapped State Government, which last year collected more than $A1.3billion in land tax.
The office of the Premier and Treasurer, Morris Iemma, was studying the report last night for budget ramifications.
