NSW Labor says the state's premier will never abandon plans for an annual land tax, despite Dominic Perrottet stepping back from his boldest ambitions.
Open for years about his disdain for stamp duty on homes, Mr Perrottet on Thursday reportedly conceded the one-off tax would have to remain an option for home buyers.
"If there are future reforms, it will all be about choice," he told the Daily Telegraph on Thursday.
"If you give people choice, then it's very difficult for people to say that there's a problem with it."
But Labor says re-electing Mr Perrottet in the upcoming March election would give him a green light to introduce the broad-based land tax the premier "has been obsessed with" for years, NSW Shadow Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said.
"His plan is to say what he must to get through the election before he charges full-steam ahead and introduces a broad-based land tax," Mr Mookhey said.
"The fact that Mr Perrottet has again refused to rule out extending his land tax even further shows that he will never give up on the plan he spent years fighting for."
Under laws passed in November, first home buyers purchasing a property for up to $1.5 million can choose to pay stamp duty or an annual land tax.
While stamp duty adds about 4.5 per cent to a home's purchase price, the land tax involves an annual charge of $400 plus 0.3 per cent 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.
However, 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 Mr 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.
