Property tax
Land tax in all eight jurisdictions, and what the structure costs you
Land tax is eight separate taxes with eight separate thresholds, and each state aggregates your holdings its own way. A trust, a company or a second name on the title can change the bill by five figures a year.
It is not one tax. It is eight of them, and they do not agree.
Every state and territory runs its own land tax, with its own threshold, its own scale, its own view of what a trust is and its own surcharge for a foreign owner. The tax-free threshold runs from $1,075,000 in New South Wales down to $50,000 in Victoria — a factor of more than twenty on the same kind of asset. Aggregation is per jurisdiction, so two properties in one state are taxed very differently from one property in each of two states, on identical total value.
Then there is the structure. Hold land in a discretionary trust in New South Wales without a qualifying beneficiary clause and the surcharge rate of 1.6% applies from the first dollar with no threshold at all — on land worth a little over a million, that is roughly $17,200 a year that an individual holding the same land would not pay. In Victoria the trust threshold drops to $25,000. In Queensland the trustee threshold is $350,000 against $600,000 for an individual.
Nobody chooses an ownership structure on land tax grounds. Everybody pays for the choice every year, for as long as they hold the land.
What it works out
- Every jurisdiction at once. Enter the holdings once; the aggregation, the thresholds and the scales are applied the way each revenue office applies them.
- The trust surcharge where it bites. Which of your holdings are exposed to it, in which states, and what it is costing a year.
- Foreign owner surcharges. 5% in New South Wales, 4% in Victoria, 3% in Queensland, and the smaller ones elsewhere — applied on top rather than instead.
- eight ownership structures side by side. Individual, joint, a second name on the title, company, unit trust, discretionary trust with and without the qualifying clause, and an SMSF — each carried across every state you hold land in.
- Over the holding period, not one year. Land tax is annual and thresholds move; the number that matters is the total across the years you intend to hold.
What the full report adds
- The structure comparison in full, with the restructuring cost — duty, CGT, legal — set against the annual saving, so the answer accounts for getting there and not just being there.
- Each state's exemptions applied to your holdings, principal place of residence and primary production included, rather than assumed away.
- What one more property does. The marginal land tax on the next purchase in each state, which is the figure that actually belongs in a yield calculation.
- Every portfolio, as many times as you like. One payment, no expiry.
What it will not do
It does not give tax or legal advice, and restructuring land ownership has duty and capital gains consequences that will usually dwarf a year's land tax. What this does is tell you whether the annual number is large enough to be worth a conversation, and hand you the arithmetic for it. Your actual assessment is issued by the revenue office in each state on the land you held at its own taxing date. Everything here runs on the published scales for the 2026 land tax year.
What people ask before they run it
How is land tax worked out in Australia?
Each state adds up the land value of everything one owner holds in that state at its assessment date and applies its own scale to the total. Land in another state is not counted, and neither is the home you live in or land used for primary production. The thresholds are nothing alike: $1,075,000 in New South Wales, $50,000 in Victoria, $600,000 in Queensland, $300,000 in Western Australia and $125,000 in Tasmania. The Northern Territory has no land tax at all.
Why does a family trust pay more land tax?
In New South Wales a discretionary trust is a special trust, which gets no tax-free threshold: it pays 1.6% of the whole land value from the first dollar. On land worth exactly the general threshold of $1,075,000 that is $17,200 a year where an individual pays nothing. Victoria charges trusts a surcharge scale that starts at $25,000, and Queensland assesses a trustee from $350,000 instead of $600,000. Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have no trust surcharge at all.
Do you give tax advice?
No. This is an information service: it applies the published land tax scales to the figures you enter and shows what they produce, with every working visible. It ranks structures on one stated arithmetic measure — total land tax over the period you enter — and does not recommend one. Transfer duty, capital gains tax, asset protection and how income is distributed sit outside that measure and are not in it.
What does the full report add?
The free result gives you this year's bill, aggregated, in every state. The report prices the same land held eight different ways, ranks them on total land tax over your holding period, shows the year each state's threshold stops protecting you as land values are revalued, and separates the foreign and absentee surcharges out so you can see what part of the bill is the surcharge.
Everything on Land Tax Check
The estimate is free, and it is a real one.
Aggregates Australian land holdings the way each state's revenue office does, applies the published land tax scales, trust surcharge rates and foreign owner surcharges in all eight jurisdictions, and ranks every lawful ownership structure on total land tax over the holding period.
Start the Land Tax calculator
