It's amazing what a week can do to many situations. The past week has seen the prospect of a land tax being put to bed by the government. The suggestion of a land tax had many negative implications for the property sector and would have weakened it as an investment option.

However, it does highlight a disturbing mindset within the system which basically says that property is always going to be fair game as far as being a source of tax for government is concerned. One only has to consider that it is already used as the primary source of funding local government through rates to realise how it is viewed by the bureaucracy.

Again, many local authorities apply a differential rate to commercial property on the assumption that somehow it is more demanding on the local authority's services. This is in fact a penal rate for the privilege of owning a commercial building.

Another underlying assumption behind this mentality is that commercial property owners must automatically have the ability to pay huge rates bills. The flaw in this sort of thinking is that such owners are forced to pay these bills even when a building is vacant and the owner is not receiving any income from it.

One of the tests for applying a tax to anything is its ease of collection. Again, the bureaucracy have correctly identified property as meeting the criteria, after all, it is fairly difficult to hide property or to disguise it as something else to avoid the tax.

So, while we may have dodged a bullet this week with land tax, never doubt that it is far from the mind of the powers that be.

Until next time, have a great week.