Stamp duty is a tax charged by the individual states on any property that changes hands in Australia. But stamp duty costs are getting out of hand. With the median house price in Australia now around $1 million and the fact that stamp duty taxes are percentage based, the stamp duty payments run into the tens of thousands for almost any purchase. For example: in Melbourne the stamp duty payment on a $1 million home is $55,000! This is a massive extra that buyers need to include on their already high purchase price. Stamp duty is nothing but a tax that governments take from struggling home buyers to go and waste on excessive expenditure such as the out-of-control NDIS spending or the $500 million spent on the YES vote.

There could, however, be some relief on the horizon.

There have been various recommendations from independent property experts requesting that stamp duty be reduced and even abolished on new property purchases. The argument given this idea some momentum is that this will encourage buyers to enter into the market and bring more stock to the grossly undersupplied Australian property market.

Unfortunately reducing the stamp duty tax would make a hole in the budget and the government would need to find it somewhere else. Maybe one alternative solution to fixing that hole could be that they stop wasting so much taxpayers money. Just a thought.