This year the coronavirus pandemic continued to significantly impact Victoria from both a health and economic perspective.
The delivery of coronavirus relief measures has been a key focus for the State Revenue Office over the past 18 months, requiring a significant body of work that quickly developed the new IT systems and processes needed to implement this support.
Additionally, we have also worked closely with our affected customers, providing tailored assistance including:
- additional time for dealing with tax affairs
- deferrals for upcoming lodgement dates
- payment deferrals
- flexible payment plans, and
- remissions of interest charges.
Below are our main support levers that we delivered to impacted Victorian individuals and businesses this year.
Land tax
Land tax coronavirus relief measures included both reductions and deferrals on 2020 and 2021 land tax for eligible commercial landlords, residential landlords and owner‑occupiers.
This year, we received 32,397 applications for various types of land tax coronavirus relief in 2020‑21, totalling at least $247.5 million of support going to impacted customers.
Payroll tax
This year, we continued to administer several payroll tax relief measures.
Waivers and refunds
Employers with annual Victorian taxable wages up to $3 million were eligible to have their payroll tax for the 2019‑20 financial year waived.
While the majority of this relief was delivered during 2019‐20, we allocated a further $284.4 million in waivers and refunds in 2020‑21.
Liability deferrals
Certain employers with Victorian payrolls up to $10 million (based on their 2019–20 financial year annual reconciliation returns) were able to defer their 2020‑21 payroll tax liability until next year.
Victorian employers deferred $516.5 million in 2020‑21 payroll tax liabilities until 2021‑22.
New jobs tax credit
Eligible employers were entitled to a waiver of their 2020‑21 and 2021‑22 payroll tax after applying the New Jobs payroll tax credit against their liability for each of the financial years (designated financial year). In total, we allocated over $341 million in credit to 13,754 employers for the 2020‑21 payroll tax period (many of these credits will be applied during the 2021‐22 year).
Stamp duty
In addition to the existing stamp duty concessions and exemptions we administer each year, specific relief related to the pandemic helped property buyers in 2020‑21.
These measures included a stamp duty waiver up to 50% for residential property with a dutiable value up to $1 million. We processed 47,865 transactions, delivering over $336 million in stamp duty relief.
A 50% concession also applied for for regional commercial and industrial properties for contracts entered into on or after 1 January 2021; 792 transactions provided more than $30 million in stamp duty relief.
Congestion levy
For the 2020 calendar year, car park owners and operators were able to waive 25% of their congestion levy liability, and defer any outstanding balances until 31 March 2021.
This year, we processed 1719 applications and delivered $26.3 million in relief.
Commercial passenger vehicle services levy waiver
The waiver to the commercial passenger vehicle service levy delivered $5.78 million in relief to taxi and commercial passenger vehicle drivers.