When the ACT Government decided in 2012 to phase down stamp duty on property sales as part of a sweeping program of tax reforms, it based its argument on modernising the territory's tax system and making it fairer for all citizens. But there have been unintended consequences.
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One of these has been the steep increase in the rates being paid by thousands of unit and apartment owners across Canberra as a result of significant changes to the way in which these charges are calculated.
Numerous property owners have told The Canberra Times their annual rates have increased by as much as 40 per cent in a single year.
One apartment dweller, Barton's Sher Young, said her rates bill had jumped from $1400 to $2000.
With the increases expected to continue over the next few years, Ms Young now fears she will not be able to retire at the age of 60 as she had planned.
The change in the rating formula was intended to offset the fall in revenue associated with phasing out stamp duty, a so-called "regressive-tax" targeted by the then Federal treasurer, Peter Costello, when he was pushing for the introduction of the GST in the mid-1990s.
That, perhaps ironically, hasn't happened.
The ACT Government collected almost $80 million more in stamp duty in 2016-2017 than it did in 2011-2012 before the reforms were introduced.
While the increase in the stamp duty take was driven by a range of factors, including a significant rise in property values, residents who have been stung for both stamp duty payments and the more recent rates increases are not amused.
Ms Young, for example, said she had paid out at least $100,000 in stamp duty on the homes she has lived in over many years.
This includes the money paid to the government when she downsized into her current unit four years ago.
Former ACT chief minister, John Stanhope, says questions need to be answered.
"Setting out to abolish an inefficient tax and ending up collecting more of it unfortunately does more than raise questions about the genuineness of the government's stated objective in undertaking reform," he said in an article co-authored with former ACT Treasury official Khalid Ahmed last September.
"To actually increase an inefficient tax, as has been done in the ACT, inevitably has a suppressive effect on the economy."
It also breached what Mr Stanhope and Mr Ahmed had described as "the implied contract with the people of Canberra... to accept the burden of a massive increase in rates as a quid pro quo for abolishing stamp duty".
Given the dramatic blowout in rates costs for unit and apartment dwellers has coincided with a concerted effort by Mr Barr and his ministers to transition Canberrans into higher density housing, residents such as Ms Young are understandably cynical.
The best way for the ACT Government to pre-empt accusations it has indulged in a blatant cash grab would be to introduce prompt steps to alleviate the impact of the rate rises on retirees and others on limited incomes.
