Queensland Stamp Duty Aspects of Financing Transactions

Abstract

Financing transactions provide a very considerable portion of the revenue base collected by the Stamp Act 1895-1990. Most duty of any consequence flows from acquisitions of various kinds of property or from financing transactions. One might have thought that the task of levying these two streams of duty would be approached by two broad categories of transactions duty. However, stamp duty began its evolution as a tax on instruments rather than transactions. It approaches its task through a series of "heads of duty" and statutory provisions which have been added progressively to the original structure. The result bears some comparison with Queensland's Barrier Reef. In each case, evolutionary growth has produced an intricate structure, the detail of which is often difficult to chart, but which offers relatively few clear passages to open water.