to $1.5m can choose to pay stamp duty or an annual land tax.

While stamp duty adds about 4.5% to a home’s purchase price, the land tax
involves an annual charge of $400 plus 0.3% of the property’s land value.

For most owner-occupiers, the sum of annual charges would take about 15 to 20
years to exceed the one-off stamp duty charge.

But the land tax’s recurring nature has Labor calling it a “forever tax on the family
home” and pledging to repeal it if it wins government in March.

Stamp duty – making up a quarter of the NSW government’s revenue – has been
criticised by leading economists, including former Treasury chief Ken Henry.

In Henry’s 2010 tax review, he described it as a highly inefficient tax on land that
discourages people from moving as their personal circumstances change.

 
11 Jan 2023 21:57
Astronomers discover Earth-sized exoplanet

Researchers using Nasa’s James Webb space telescope have for the first time
confirmed the existence of an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star.
Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as
our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter.

The space telescope has also given insight into the birth of stars at “cosmic
noon” with a newly released image of the NGC 346 cluster.

You can read more here:

Related: Image of star cluster more than 10bn years ago sheds light on early
stages of universe
 
11 Jan 2023 21:45
Anthony Albanese has taken to social media before his flight to Papau New
Guinea, telling us about what his priorities will be in discussions with PNG Prime
Minister James Marape.

Defence treaty ‘will be signed today’, PNG minister

says
11 Jan 2023 21:34
PNG foreign affairs minister Justin Tkatchenko said the bilateral defence treaty
between Australia and Papua New Guinea “will be signed today”.

It will be announced today after our bilateral talks … our officials from both sides
have been working on this for three or four months.
Earlier Australia’s Pacific minister Pat Conroy said the treaty was still being
negotiated.

Tkatchenko said the treaty was about regional security, defence cooperation and
also enhancing the PNG defence force.

He said China was one of PNG’s “biggest economic partners” when asked why
Beijing was funding a new military hospital in PNG:

And we work with them in many different ways, on the understanding [of] what we