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Every calculation is unlocked. Change a land value, add a state, try another owner, and re-run it as many times as you like — nothing is deducted, nothing counts down, and none of it expires.

Your access Unlimited No expiry, nothing to renew

Good to know

All guides
Rate schedule in use Re-run after the next assessment date
New South Wales threshold Held at its 2024 amount since 2025
Next assessment date Whatever the title says at midnight
A family trust in NSW From the first dollar, no threshold

Your account

Access and orders

The bill arrives a year after the decision that set it

Don't lose over $300,000. We'll show you your land tax options.

You bought the second one, and the assessment for the first one went up. Nobody mentioned that every state adds your holdings together and taxes the total, that the thresholds are nothing alike, or that the trust your accountant set up for asset protection has no land tax threshold at all in New South Wales.

Revenue NSW will work out New South Wales. The State Revenue Office will work out Victoria. Neither will tell you what the other one is charging, or what the same land would cost in a different name. We do all eight in three minutes — then price eight ways of owning it, side by side.

  • Free estimate. No card, no sign up
  • Full report $249 — one payment, nothing renews
  • Built on the 2026 land tax year scales
30 second estimate

Three inputs for a quick estimate:

$
Land tax $— this year
A different structure would save $—

A rough guide on one state. The full calculator asks for all eight, takes the home back out, and prices every ownership structure.

If this is you

If the assessment made no sense,
that is not your fault.

There are eight land tax regimes in this country and no two of them agree on the threshold, the assessment date, the treatment of a trust or whether a surcharge applies. Nobody is required to explain any of that to you before you sign a contract.

"Why has it gone up when I haven't bought anything?"

Because land is revalued every year and the threshold it is measured against is not. New South Wales has held its threshold at its 2024 amount since the 2025 land tax year, so the same land climbs a scale that is standing still.

"What is a special trust, and why am I one?"

It is the New South Wales term for a trust whose beneficiaries have no fixed entitlement — which is every discretionary family trust. A special trust gets no tax-free threshold at all and pays from the first dollar of land value.

"My accountant said a trust, my mate said both our names"

They can both be right in one state and both wrong in another, and the friend who did it in Perth was in the one place with no trust surcharge. Adding a second name to a title buys no second threshold anywhere, because joint owners are assessed together.

"Is it too late to fix it?"

For land already in a name, changing it is a transfer: duty in the state it sits in and a capital gains event on the way out. That is the honest answer, and it is why the next purchase matters more than the last one.

So we built the thing that was missing.

You type in the land value in each state and whose name is on the title. We apply all eight published scales, take out the home and the farm, work out every lawful way of owning it and put them in order. No appointment, no sales call, and we never ask for an assessment number, a client ID or a tax file number.

The revenue offices won't tell you Each one assesses its own state on the ownership recorded at its own date. None of them looks at another state's land, and none has any reason to tell you what the same holding would cost in a different name.
The people selling you the property won't tell you An agent, a conveyancer and a lender all have work to do before settlement, and none of them is required to price the land tax the entity on the contract will trigger a year later.
A registered tax agent will — on their clock That is genuinely the right call for a complicated portfolio, and this is not a substitute for it. Most people are not missing an opinion. They are missing the arithmetic to take to the appointment.

Three questions, thirty seconds, and you will know roughly where you stand. It costs nothing.

The loss

Two investors. The same $1,650,000 of Sydney land.
$302,400 apart.

Two units, bought in the same year, worth the same money, in the same street. The only difference is the name on the certificate of title, and neither of them chose it against a figure.

Guessed

Bought through the family trust

  • A discretionary trust, set up for asset protection
  • A special trust in New South Wales — no threshold at all
  • Taxed at 1.6% of the whole land value, from the first dollar
  • $26,400 in the first year, before any revaluation
Land tax over ten years $302,646
Worked it out

One unit each, in two separate names

  • Two titles, one name on each — not both names on both
  • Two separate owners, so two separate thresholds
  • $825,000 each, under the $1,075,000 threshold
  • Nothing at all in the first year
Land tax over ten years $246
Same land. Same money. Same street. One of them lost this. $302,400 That is $30,240 a year, or $582 a week, on land neither of them sold and neither of them improved. And neither of them did anything wrong: there are eight lawful ways to own this land, the difference between the cheapest and the dearest is the figure above, and the first investor was never shown the list. The report that stops this being you costs $249.

Both investors are invented. What is not invented is the arithmetic: 1.6% of $1,650,000 with no threshold against two holdings of $825,000 under a $1,075,000 threshold, projected over ten years at 3% land value growth on the 2026 land tax year scales. Every figure above is computed by the same engine the report uses and is on the worked examples page.

The alternatives

Three ways to answer this question.
Two of them answer a smaller one.

Guess
Wait for the assessment
The state calculators
One per revenue office
Land Tax Check
This calculator
What it costs Nothing now,
whatever the notice says later
Free $249
How many states at once None One All eight
Prices a different owner
Projects it over the years you hold it
It is the assessing authority's own figure

The clock

Three dates that decide what this costs you

Land tax runs on midnights. Whatever the certificate of title says at the moment the state looks is what is assessed for the whole of the following year, and a settlement a day either side of one is a year of tax nobody chose.

31 December

New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT

They assess what you own at midnight for the calendar year that follows. The New South Wales general threshold is and has not moved since the 2025 land tax year; Victoria's is . When each state assesses.

30 June

Queensland, South Australia, WA and Tasmania

Four jurisdictions run on the financial year instead, so one portfolio has two assessment dates six months apart and a purchase can miss one and catch the other. The Queensland threshold is for a resident individual. These figures are the scales.

2033

The Victorian COVID Debt Levy ends

It applies to the 2024 to 2033 land tax years, so the 2034 year is the first assessed without the extra fixed amounts. Until then a New South Wales family trust pays from the first dollar and a foreign owner pays on top — a year on land at the threshold.

The report

The Land Tax Structure Report

The free estimate tells you this year's bill in every state. This is the part that prices every other way of owning the same land and puts them in order. Fifteen sections and thirteen charts, on your own land values, with every working shown so you can check it against your assessment or argue with it.

Free — tells you there is a decision

  • Your land tax this year, aggregated, in every state at once
  • Which state most of the bill is coming from
  • Which exemptions and surcharges have switched on for you
  • Every lawful ownership structure named, with the whole explanation open to read
  • A banded figure for what a different structure would have saved — a range, not the number

What stops the loss — $249

  • What each structure costs, to the dollar, over the years you hold it
  • All eight ranked, cheapest to dearest, on one stated measure
  • The bill broken down state by state, with the threshold headroom left in each
  • The year each threshold runs out as land values are revalued
  • The trust surcharge and the foreign surcharge separated out from the tax
  • The split ratio between two owners that produces the lowest bill
  • What $1,000,000 of land costs in each of the eight, so you know where the next one goes
  • The assistant, on your own figures, with no limit
  • The whole thing as a PDF you can print, charts included

See a real one, free — an invented investor run all the way through, with the open half exactly as a customer sees it, and the assistant live on it for two questions.

How it works

Your land tax in three steps

If you can read a rates notice, you can use this. Simple mode asks five questions. Advanced adds the growth rate, the threshold assumption and the ACT property count if you want to go deeper.

01

Tell us what you hold

The land value in each state, whose name is on the title, how many separate titles, and the land under the home you live in. We do not ask for an address, an assessment number, a client ID or a tax file number — nothing you would not read out to a bank teller.

02

See this year's bill, free

Your land tax in every state at once, aggregated the way each state aggregates it, with the exemptions taken out and the surcharges added on. Every structure is named with its explanation open to read. What is held back is what each one costs.

03

Put them in order

$249 opens the full report: every structure priced over the years you hold it, ranked on one stated measure, with the year each threshold runs out and where the next purchase would be cheapest. PDF included, ready to take to your accountant.

Built on the eight published scales

The Land Tax Management Act 1956 (NSW), the Land Tax Act 2005 (Vic), the Land Tax Act 2010 (Qld), the Land Tax Act 1936 (SA), the Land Tax Assessment Act 2002 (WA), the Land Tax Act 2000 (Tas) and the Rates Act 2004 (ACT) — as published by each revenue office for the 2026 land tax year.

Every working shown

Nothing is a black box. Every figure carries the threshold it was measured against and the scale it came off, so you can put it beside the assessment notice and check it.

Not advice, and we say so

We are not licensed to tell you what to do, and the arithmetic is the part people are missing rather than the opinion. Transfer duty, capital gains tax and whether a structure is open to you at all are outside what this measures, and it says so.

Refunded if it does not fit

If the report does not apply to your circumstances, tell us what went wrong within 14 days and it is refunded in full.

Included with the report

And if you do not follow something,
just ask it.

Every report comes with an assistant that has read your report — your land values, your states, your structures, your numbers — and answers questions about it in plain English. Not a search box and not a help page. It knows what your report says because it has been given it.

Ask Agent
Why is the trust costing me so much more?
Almost all of it is New South Wales. A discretionary trust is a special trust there, which means no tax-free threshold at all — so your $1,650,000 of land value is taxed at 1.6% from the first dollar, or $26,400 a year. The same land held by one individual would be taxed only on the amount above $1,075,000, which is $9,300.
What does "aggregation" mean on my notice?
That the state added your two holdings together and taxed the total on one scale, instead of taxing each one separately. It is why the second purchase raised the assessment on the first. Land in another state is not counted — no state does.

An example of the kind of answer it gives, on the sample report's figures.

  • It has your report, not a script Why the trust costs more, which state to buy the next one in, whether a second name would help. It answers from your own land values and quotes them back.
  • Plain English, on a subject that is anything but It is built for this one subject and told to explain rather than impress — no jargon without the meaning attached, short answers, and no lecture.
  • Entirely optional. Use it or ignore it. It sits behind one button on your report and does nothing until you press it. Nothing in the report is held back from somebody who never opens it, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you ask it something.
  • It is never told who you are What it receives is the figures on your report — land values, states and categories. Not your name, not your email address, not your account, and never an assessment number, a client ID or a tax file number, because we do not hold those. The name you can put on the report cover is optional and is not part of what it is given.
  • Nothing is kept The conversation stays in your browser tab and is gone when you close it. We record that a question was asked so we know the feature is used — never what it said. Section 5 of the privacy policy sets out exactly what does and does not travel.
  • It explains. It does not advise. It will tell you what the scales say, what each structure costs and where the figures come from, and it will not tell you what to do — the same line the report itself holds. Nothing here is tax advice.

Pricing

One payment, against a bill that arrives every year

One payment, no expiry, nothing to renew, and we never keep your card. It opens the whole report and lets you redo the sums as often as you like — a new state, a new title, a new owner — for as long as you like.

The only thing you can lose here is the price of the pass — and you cannot lose that either. If it does not fit your situation, tell us what went wrong within 14 days and we refund you in full.

Prices in Australian dollars. Paid securely through PayPal — card or PayPal balance, no account needed. See a sample report before you decide.

Questions

The questions everyone asks first

Each state adds up the land value of everything one owner holds inside its own borders 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, $732,000 in South Australia, $300,000 in Western Australia and $125,000 in Tasmania. The ACT does not aggregate at all, and the Northern Territory has no 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, the ACT and the Northern Territory have no trust surcharge at all.

By itself, no. Joint owners are assessed together on the jointly held land as a single taxpayer with a single threshold, before either of them is assessed on anything else. What buys a second threshold is two separate titles held in two separate sole names, and that is a decision made at purchase — adding or removing a name afterwards is a transfer of land with duty and a capital gains event attached.

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, borrowing and how income is distributed sit outside that measure and are not in it.

No, and using the wrong one overstates every figure. Land tax is charged on the unimproved land value — the site as though nothing had been built on it — which is printed on your council rates notice and issued by the Valuer-General in each state. On an apartment it is your share of the whole block, which can be a small fraction of what the flat would sell for.

Five jurisdictions charge a surcharge on top of the ordinary tax: 5% of residential land value in New South Wales, 4% of all land in Victoria, 3% in Queensland, 2% of residential land in Tasmania and 0.75% in the ACT. South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory charge none. The surcharge has no threshold and no split — dividing the land between entities does not reduce it, because every one of those entities is still foreign.

The name on the title is chosen once.

It is chosen on a contract, months before the first assessment arrives, usually by whoever asks the question first. After settlement it can only be changed by transferring the land, which means duty in the state it sits in and a capital gains event on the way out — so the cheapest three minutes in this whole process are the three before you sign.

No card. No sign up. Your answer on the next screen.

Every year you hold it is another assessment on the same decision.

Six short questions. You will know this year's bill, in every state, before you reach the price of anything.

Step 1 Just started

    Figures as at the . New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT assess what you own at midnight on 31 December; Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania at midnight on 30 June.

    1 Where are you up to?

    It changes what the answer is worth rather than what it is. Choosing the owner on a contract costs nothing; changing it afterwards is a transfer of land.

    Which of these is you?

    Moving land already owned into another name is a dutiable transfer and a capital gains event, and neither is in these figures. What is still free is where the next one goes.

    Nothing has been signed, so every arrangement priced here is still open to you at no cost. This is the only point at which that is true.

    Short steps, and only the questions that decide most of the answer.

    2 Whose name is on the title?

    Land tax follows ownership, not occupation and not who pays the loan. Four jurisdictions charge a trust more than a person for exactly the same land.

    If different properties sit in different names, pick the one holding the most. The report prices all of the others against it.

    Not how many names are on each title. Two separate owners, each able to hold a property outright, is the only version that buys a second threshold.

    Five jurisdictions charge a surcharge on top of the tax, with no threshold. New South Wales charges 5% of residential land value and Victoria 4% of all of it.

    %

    New South Wales and Tasmania charge their surcharge on residential land only; Victoria and Queensland charge theirs on everything. If it is all houses and units, leave it at 100%.

    A trust deed can make you foreign

    A discretionary trust whose deed does not exclude foreign beneficiaries can be treated as a foreign trustee in some states even where every person involved lives in Australia. If that is unresolved, answer yes and see what it costs.

    3 What do you hold, and where?

    The land value from the rates or valuation notice — the site as though nothing had been built on it — not what the property would sell for. Include the home you live in; we take it back out on the next step.

    Every state adds up what one owner holds inside its own borders and taxes the total. No state counts another state's land, which is why these are eight boxes rather than one.

    $
    $
    $
    $
    $
    $
    $

    The ACT does not aggregate. Each rented property is assessed on its own, so the count matters as much as the total.

    Rented or otherwise not lived in by the owner. A home you live in is outside ACT land tax altogether.

    $

    Asked so the line shows zero rather than being missing. The Territory levies no land tax at all.

    The land value is issued by the Valuer-General in each state, not by the revenue office, and every notice carries an objection period — commonly 60 days from the date on it.

    4 The home, and the farm

    Both come out of the state totals before the scale is applied — for an individual. In a company, a discretionary trust or a super fund, the home generally does not come out at all.

    $

    From its own rates notice. Leave it at zero if you rent where you live, or if your home is in a state you have not entered above.

    The exemption is a state exemption, so which state it sits in decides what it is worth.

    $

    Grazing, cropping, orchards, dairying, aquaculture. The tests are about the use of the land rather than about who owns it — a hobby farm or a rural block held for development generally does not qualify.

    If it is spread across two states, enter the larger holding and run the calculator again for the other.

    Victoria also charges a separate vacant residential land tax on homes left empty for more than six months. It is charged on capital improved value rather than land value, so it is a different tax base and is deliberately not in these figures.

    5 How many separate titles, and for how long?

    A state can only be divided between owners as many ways as it has titles in it. One cottage cannot be halved between two people without making them joint owners, which buys nothing.

    A rough count is fine. It changes how large the "separate owners" arrangement could be, not the tax on what you hold today.

    Land tax is annual, so one year understates a decision that lasts as long as the land is held. It changes the size of the answer rather than which way it points.

    6 The assumptions behind the projection

    Land is revalued every year and the lines it is measured against mostly are not. These two decide how fast a holding climbs a fixed scale.

    % a year

    Use something you would defend rather than something flattering. The report prices the whole range from 0% to 8% anyway, so if you think this figure is wrong the chart has yours on it.

    "No" is the published position for the two largest states: New South Wales has held its thresholds since the 2025 land tax year and the Victorian scale is legislated out to 2033.

    Printed on the cover and nowhere else, so a report you send to your accountant is recognisable when they open it. It is never sent to the assistant with your figures.

    7 Check it over, then we run the numbers

    This is everything you have told us. Anything wrong? Click the line to go back and change it.

    Saved automatically so you can reopen it from My reports. Change one land value later and save that as another.

    Free. No card, no sign up, and your answer appears on the next screen.

    Which rules switched on for you

    The part that decides what you pay every year

    You could lose $0

    That is the gap between the way this land is owned and the cheapest lawful arrangement, on your own land values.

    One year of the NSW trust surcharge, on land at the threshold $17,200
    Getting it wrong
    This report, right now $249
    See every structure priced — unlock the full report

    You can provide a different email to use as your login - or the PayPal one

    Secured by PayPal Refundable Nothing renews

    And you can ask it questions. Your report comes with an assistant that has read it and explains any figure in plain English — if you want it. It is given the amounts on your report, never your name or your email, and the conversation stays in your browser.

    See everything it includes · See a sample report

    The only thing you can lose here is the price of the pass — and you cannot lose that either. If it does not fit your situation, tell us what went wrong within 14 days and we refund you in full.
    The only thing you can lose here is $249 — and you cannot lose that either. If it does not fit your situation, tell us what went wrong within 14 days and we refund you in full. See a sample report before you buy.

    Before you decide

    Yes, it is included, and using it is entirely your choice. It sits behind one button on your report and does nothing until you press it — nothing in the report is held back from somebody who never opens it.

    When you do ask it something, what it receives is the figures on your report: amounts and categories. Not your name, not your email address, not your account, and never a Medicare number, tax file number or bank detail — we do not hold those in the first place. The name you can put on the report cover is optional and is not part of what it is given. The conversation stays in your browser tab and is gone when you close it, and we record that a question was asked without recording what it said.

    Section 5 of the privacy policy sets out exactly what does and does not travel, including who processes it.

    No. You pay once and the access is yours. There is no subscription and nothing renews. PayPal handles the payment, so we never even see your card number.

    Yes. Pick the entity holding the largest share and the report prices every other arrangement against it, so you can see what a different split would have cost. If the portfolio genuinely divides in an unusual way, run it twice and compare — there is no limit on how many times you can.

    What you are getting

    Total $0.00

    You can provide a different email to use as your login - or the PayPal one

    Secured by PayPal     Pay by PayPal or card     No renewals

    First, the three things nobody explains

    1
    Each state adds up only its own land

    Everything one owner holds inside a state is added together and taxed on one rising scale, so the second property pushes the first one up it. No state counts another state’s land, which is why a portfolio spread across three states gets three tax-free thresholds and the same portfolio in one state gets one.

    2
    The entity on the title is the taxpayer

    Four jurisdictions charge a trust more than a person for exactly the same land, and New South Wales charges a discretionary trust from the first dollar with no tax-free threshold at all. Western Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory charge no trust surcharge of any kind.

    3
    Two names on one title is still one threshold

    Joint owners are assessed together on the jointly held land, as a single taxpayer, before either of them is assessed on anything else. What buys a second threshold is two separate titles in two separate sole names — and that is decided at purchase, because adding or removing a name afterwards is a transfer of land.

    Everything below is those three facts in real dollars, for nine different portfolios. Worked out on the current schedule.

    None of these is you.

    Your own figure depends on the land value in each state, whose name is on each title, how many separate titles there are, and whether the home you live in is inside the structure or outside it. Four answers, three minutes, and it costs nothing.

    These are the Ashworths' numbers, not yours The Ashworths are invented — $1,850,000 of New South Wales land value including the house they live in, a $620,000 Melbourne townhouse, three titles, two owners, all of it in a discretionary family trust. Change any one of those and the gaps between the structures change, and the order they come in changes completely.

    Nothing on this page is an answer for your situation, and none of it should be relied on for a decision about you.
    What it does show is exactly what your own report looks like and how to read it: the same engine and the same 2026 land tax year scales. The charts in the later sections are shown here as outlines.
    01

    Your options, side by side

    Eight lawful ways to own the same $2,470,000 of land value, and what each one costs in land tax over ten years, on the Ashworths' own figures. Same land, same value — the difference is only in whose name is on the title and in what capacity. Open Show Details on any row for what it means and the process behind it.

    02

    The short version

    Four numbers. Everything else in this report explains where they came from.

    Land tax this year $34,058 as the trust holds it today
    Costs the least over 10 years $29,146 Two individuals, a property each in separate names
    Costs the most $392,760 A discretionary (family) trust
    Between theirs and the cheapest $363,614 over the same ten years, on the same land

    The measure. Every figure in this report is total land tax over ten years, on the 2026 land tax year scales, with land values grown at 3.0% a year and thresholds assumed to stay where they are. It is the only measure used and it is stated on every page. Transfer duty, capital gains tax, asset protection, borrowing and how income is distributed are outside it.

    03

    The eight, drawn to scale

    The same figures as the list above. The shorter the bar, the less land tax that arrangement costs over the ten years.

    Total land tax over ten years, by how the land is owned.
    04

    Where the bill actually comes from

    This year's land tax, jurisdiction by jurisdiction. No state counts another state's land, so these are two separate assessments rather than one.

    JurisdictionLand value ExemptThreshold for this owner TaxTotal
    NSW New South Wales$1,850,000 None $29,600$29,600
    VIC Victoria$620,000 $25,000 $4,458$4,458
    This year's bill in each jurisdiction, split into the tax, any separate levy and any surcharge.

    Nothing is exempt here, and there is no threshold either. The $760,000 of land under the house the Ashworths live in would be exempt if one of them owned it; held in a discretionary trust it is not, because the principal place of residence exemption needs a person living there as the owner. And a discretionary trust is a special trust in New South Wales, so the $1,075,000 tax-free threshold an individual would have does not apply at all — the whole $1,850,000 is taxed at 1.6% from the first dollar. Those two lines together are almost the entire gap between the trust and the individual rows in section 01.

    Victoria charges a trust from $25,000 rather than the $50,000 an individual gets, on its own surcharge scale.

    05

    $1,000,000 of land, in each of the eight

    A fixed reference amount rather than the Ashworths' own holding, so this answers a different question: where the next one would be cheapest to put.

    $1,000,000 of land value, priced in every jurisdiction, held by one individual and held by a discretionary trust.
    06

    What the family trust costs, state by state

    The Ashworths' own land values, priced in a discretionary trust against one individual, in each jurisdiction separately. New South Wales is almost all of it.

    The extra land tax a discretionary trust pays each year, per jurisdiction, on this land.

    Nine more sections, and the charts in them

    • 07What each one has cost by each year
    • 09How much threshold you have left, and the year it runs out
    • 11The split between two owners that costs the least
    • 15What your exemptions are worth, in each structure

    Everything above is real arithmetic on a fictional portfolio. Run yours and this half opens on your own land values.

    And you can ask it questions. Every report comes with an assistant that has read your report and explains any figure in it in plain English. Using it is entirely your choice, it does nothing until you press the button, and it is given the land values on your report and never your name, your email or your account.

    That is somebody else's answer. Yours takes about three minutes and costs nothing.

    That link is no longer available

    It may have been switched off by the person who sent it, or the address may have been copied incompletely. Ask them for a fresh link.

    We could not find that link

    The link may have already been used. If you are still getting emails, write to us and we will stop them by hand.

    Reading is useful. Knowing what this is about to cost you is better.

    Surcharges

    Victoria’s absentee owner surcharge

    Victoria charges 4% on land held by an absentee owner, and it is the broadest surcharge in the country in two ways: it applies to all land rather than to residential land only, and the test that triggers it is about presence rather than only about citizenship.

    2026 land tax year scales 9 min read Australia
    A Melbourne apartment tower photographed from street level at dusk

    What the surcharge is

    The absentee owner surcharge is an additional amount of Victorian land tax, calculated at 4% of the taxable value of the Victorian land an absentee owner holds. It is charged in addition to whatever the general or trust scale produces, and it has no threshold of its own.

    Absentee surcharge = 4% × total taxable Victorian land value

    It rose from 2% to 4% for the 2024 land tax year, doubling the figure for every owner already caught by it.

    It is charged on all land, and that is unusual

    New South Wales and Tasmania charge their surcharges on residential land only. Victoria does not distinguish: a warehouse, a shopfront, a block of industrial land and a house are all in the base.

    For an absentee owner with a commercial portfolio that is the single largest difference between the two largest states. On $5,000,000 of commercial land value, New South Wales charges no surcharge at all and Victoria charges $200,000 a year.

    Who is an absentee

    Broadly, an absentee individual is somebody who is not an Australian citizen or permanent resident and who either does not ordinarily reside in Australia, or was absent from Australia at 31 December, or was absent for more than six months in total during the calendar year.

    The second and third limbs are what catch people who do not think of themselves as absentee at all. Somebody working overseas on a two-year posting is absent. So is somebody who spent seven scattered months of the year abroad. The test is applied to the calendar year and measured against the 31 December assessment date.

    An absentee corporation is one incorporated outside Australia, or one in which an absentee person has a controlling interest. An absentee trust is one with an absentee beneficiary — and for a discretionary trust that includes a beneficiary who merely could receive a distribution.

    The discretionary trust problem

    This is the same deed issue that arises in New South Wales, and it works the same way. A family trust with a widely drawn beneficiary class — all the descendants of a named person, their spouses, and connected entities — will very often include somebody who is or could become an absentee.

    The trust does not have to have distributed anything to them. The capacity is enough.

    The remedy is a deed amendment that excludes absentee and foreign persons from the class, irrevocably. It is a solicitor’s job, it is not expensive against the annual figure, and the single most useful thing an owner of Victorian land in a family trust can do is find out for certain whether their deed already contains one.

    How it stacks with everything else

    The surcharge sits on top. An absentee discretionary trust holding Victorian land pays the trust surcharge scale and then 4% of the whole taxable value as well.

    On $1,000,000 of Victorian land value that is $8,163 on the trust scale plus $40,000 of absentee surcharge — $48,163 a year, against $4,650 for a resident individual holding the same land. The surcharge is more than eight times the entire ordinary tax.

    Why no structure helps

    Because the surcharge has no threshold and follows the owner rather than the scale, dividing the land between entities does nothing at all: each entity is still absentee, and each pays 4% of its share.

    That is why the report separates the surcharge out from the tax. On an absentee portfolio the structure ranking is still worth having, but it is ranking the smaller half of the bill, and saying so is more useful than presenting a saving that does not touch the larger half.

    Exemptions from the surcharge itself

    Land that is exempt from land tax is outside the surcharge too, because the surcharge is charged on taxable value. So genuinely exempt primary production land held by an absentee attracts neither.

    Victoria also has a discretionary exemption process for absentee corporations and trusts whose Australian operations and Australian ownership are substantial, exercised by the Treasurer on application. It is a real path and it is a narrow one, and it is applied for rather than assumed.

    And the other Victorian charge on the same property

    Vacant residential land tax is separate again, and an absentee owner with an empty Melbourne apartment can meet all three: ordinary land tax on the site value, the absentee surcharge on the same value, and vacant residential land tax on the capital improved value.

    Only the first two are in the figures this calculator produces. The third is charged on a different base and is worth treating as a separate bill entirely.

    See what the surcharge is, separately from the tax

    The free calculator applies Victoria’s absentee surcharge to all your Victorian land and every other state’s surcharge on its own base, and shows the surcharge as its own line rather than folded into the total.

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    support@calculatedchoices.com.au Questions about the calculator, getting back in, or a refund
    Revenue NSW — 1300 139 816 New South Wales land tax: assessments, thresholds, the special trust rules and surcharge land tax
    State Revenue Office Victoria — 13 21 61 Victorian land tax, the trust surcharge, the absentee owner surcharge and vacant residential land tax
    Queensland Revenue Office — 1300 300 734 Queensland land tax, the home exemption, and the separate company and trustee scale
    RevenueSA — (08) 8226 3750 South Australian land tax, trust notifications and the grouping provisions
    RevenueWA — (08) 9262 1200 Western Australian land tax and the Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax
    State Revenue Office Tasmania — (03) 6166 4400 Tasmanian land tax and the foreign investor land tax surcharge
    ACT Revenue Office — (02) 6207 0028 ACT land tax, which is charged per property rather than aggregated, and the foreign ownership surcharge
    Tax Practitioners Board — 1300 362 829 Checking that somebody giving you tax advice is actually registered to give it

    Send us a message

    You bought a second investment property, or moved one into a trust, and a year later an assessment arrived that was larger than you expected on land you had not touched. Land tax is charged every year for as long as the land is held, it is decided by which entity is on the title at one particular midnight, and by the time the notice explains that, the decision is a year old and expensive to change.

    None of the rules are secret. They are in the Land Tax Management Act 1956 (NSW), the Land Tax Act 2005 (Vic), the Land Tax Act 2010 (Qld), the Land Tax Act 1936 (SA), the Land Tax Assessment Act 2002 (WA), the Land Tax Act 2000 (Tas) and the Rates Act 2004 (ACT), and every revenue office publishes its own scale for the current year. What almost nobody sees is their own figures against all eight at once: the Acts sit in eight places, the thresholds move on different cycles, the assessment dates are six months apart, and each calculator a state publishes is correct about that state and silent about the rest.

    Land Tax Check does one thing: it applies those published scales to your land values and shows you, in full, what they produce. Every state aggregated the way that state aggregates it, every lawful ownership structure priced over the years you hold it, every arrangement ranked on one stated measure, and every working visible so you can check it against your own notice, argue with it, or take it to somebody who can.

    We do not tell you what to do. We are not licensed to, and the arithmetic is the part people are missing rather than the opinion — the measure here is land tax and nothing else, so transfer duty, capital gains tax, asset protection and whether a structure is even open to you are all outside it and the report says so. What changing the ownership actually costs is the guide to read before deciding this is easy to fix.

    1. About this policy

    This policy explains how XTO Pty. Ltd. (we, us, our) collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information, and how you can access, correct or complain about it. We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

    It applies to calculatedchoices.com.au and to every email we send you. It does not apply to any third party site we link to.

    2. What we never collect

    We do not ask for, and you should never send us, your Medicare number, tax file number, land tax assessment numbers, client identification numbers, or any government identifier, bank account details or card number. The calculator does not need them. If you send one to us anyway we will delete it rather than store it.

    We do not collect sensitive information as defined in the Privacy Act — health information, racial or ethnic origin, political or religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or criminal record. Where the calculator asks about care needs it asks about funding categories, never about a medical condition.

    3. What we collect, and why

    Information you give us

    • Account details — first and last name, email address, and optionally phone, suburb, state, postcode and your relationship to the person entering care. Used to create and secure your account and to deliver what you bought.
    • Saved reports — the figures you entered and the results produced, stored against your account only if you choose to save one. Used so you can return to and compare them.
    • Purchases — the order, amount, currency, access period and the PayPal transaction reference. Used to grant access, issue receipts and meet our tax and record keeping obligations.
    • Correspondence — what you write to us and our reply. Used to answer you and to resolve disputes.
    • Email estimates and reviews — the email address you give us to receive a free estimate, and any review you submit for publication.

    Information collected automatically

    • Technical data — IP address, browser user agent, device type, screen and viewport size, and the referring page.
    • Activity data — the pages you open, the order you open them in, time spent on each, how far you scroll, which calculator steps you complete, and which buttons you press. Used to understand where the site is confusing and to improve it.
    • Advertising identifiers — where you arrive from an advertisement, the click identifier appended to the link (for example Google's gclid) and any campaign parameters, so we can measure which advertising works.

    4. Where the calculation happens

    In your browser, on your device. The figures you type into the calculator are processed locally to produce your result. They are transmitted to us only if you choose to save a scenario to your account. If you never save one, we never receive them.

    Two exceptions, and both are things you have to choose to do:

    • If you ask us to email your free estimate, the headline figure that estimate produced is stored with your email address so the estimate we send you is the one you saw.
    • If you use the optional report assistant, the figures in the report you have open are sent to us and on to the service that answers it. That is the only part of this site that sends anything to a third party, and section 5 sets out exactly what does and does not travel.

    5. The report assistant

    A paid report comes with an optional assistant you can ask questions about your own figures. It is the one part of this site that sends anything to a third party, so it is set out here in full.

    It is entirely your choice, and it does nothing until you use it. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you open the assistant and ask a question. If you never open it, this section does not apply to you at all, and the rest of the report works exactly the same.

    What is sent when you do ask

    • A plain-text summary of the figures in the report you have open — the amounts, categories and comparisons the report already shows you on screen.
    • The question you typed, and the questions and answers already in that conversation, so a follow-up makes sense.

    What is not sent

    • Your name. The name field on the calculator is optional and is used only on your own report cover. It is not part of what the assistant is given.
    • Your email address, your account, your phone number or your street address. The assistant is not told who you are, and is given no way to find out.
    • Your Medicare number, tax file number, land tax assessment numbers, client identification numbers, or any government identifier, bank account or card details — we never hold these in the first place. See section 2.

    What travels is a set of amounts and categories. On its own it does not identify anybody, and we do not send anything alongside it that would.

    Who processes it

    The request is answered by Google's Gemini API, which processes it outside Australia — see sections 10 and 11. We do not train any model on your figures and we have no arrangement permitting anyone to do so; what Google does with data sent to its API is governed by its own terms, which we do not control.

    How long it is kept

    • The summary of your figures is held in our server's memory for one hour so a conversation does not have to re-send it with every question, and is then discarded. It is never written to our database.
    • The conversation itself is stored in your own browser tab and is gone when you close that tab. We do not keep a copy.
    • We record that a question was asked, and how long it was, so we know whether the feature is used. We do not record what it said.

    Because the assistant is optional, you can have the entire paid report without any of the above ever happening. Nothing in the report is withheld from somebody who never opens it.

    6. Cookies and browser storage

    We use the following, and nothing else:

    • An authentication cookie — set only when you sign in, so you stay signed in. Strictly necessary.
    • A guest identifier — so a scenario saved before you register can be attached to your account when you do.
    • A session key (browser session storage) — identifies one visit for the activity data described above. It is a random value and is discarded when you close the tab.
    • A visitor key (browser local storage) — a random value kept for up to twelve months so we can tell a returning visitor from a new one. It contains no personal information and is not shared with anyone.
    • Preferences — your light or dark theme choice.

    You can clear or block these through your browser at any time. Clearing them will sign you out and reset your preferences; the site will otherwise work normally.

    7. Analytics and advertising

    We use Google Analytics and Google Ads to measure how people find and use the site and whether our advertising is worth running. Where these are enabled, Google receives your IP address, device and browser information, the pages you viewed, and — when you complete a purchase — the order reference and the amount paid. Google may set its own cookies and may combine this with data it holds from other sources. Google's handling of that data is governed by its own privacy policy, not ours.

    We do not sell your personal information, and we do not disclose it to data brokers, advertising networks other than as described above, revenue offices, tax agents, accountants, conveyancers, lenders or property marketers, or anyone who might try to sell you something.

    You can opt out of Google Analytics using Google's browser add-on, and you can adjust personalised advertising in your Google account settings.

    8. Payments

    Payments are processed by PayPal. Your card or account details are entered on PayPal's systems and are never transmitted to, seen by, or stored on our servers. We receive only the transaction reference, the amount, the status and the email address associated with the payment.

    9. Who we disclose information to

    • Service providers who host the site, send our email and process payments, and only so they can perform that function.
    • Google, as described in sections 5 and 7.
    • Professional advisers — our accountants and lawyers, under obligations of confidence.
    • A purchaser of our business, if it is ever sold, on terms that require them to honour this policy.
    • Law enforcement, courts or regulators, where we are required or authorised by law.

    10. Overseas disclosure

    Some of these providers store or process data outside Australia, principally in the United States (Google, PayPal) and, depending on our email provider, in other countries. By using the site you acknowledge that we take reasonable steps to ensure overseas recipients handle your information consistently with the APPs, but that we cannot control and are not accountable for how an overseas recipient handles it once disclosed, and that you may not be able to seek redress in that jurisdiction.

    11. Security

    The site runs entirely over HTTPS. Passwords are stored as salted PBKDF2 hashes, not as text anyone here can read. Access to the database is restricted to those who need it. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted over the internet, but we take reasonable steps to protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

    If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required by the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

    12. How long we keep it

    • Account and saved reports — until you delete them or ask us to.
    • Order and payment records — seven years, as required by Australian tax law. We cannot delete these earlier, even on request.
    • Activity data — up to twenty‑six months, then deleted or aggregated so it no longer identifies anyone.
    • Email leads — until you unsubscribe, then only the record needed to honour that unsubscribe.

    13. Direct marketing

    If you give us your email address for a free estimate we may follow up about the full report. Every commercial email we send identifies us and carries a functional unsubscribe link, as required by the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). We action unsubscribes immediately. You will still receive transactional email — receipts, access details and password resets — because those are not marketing.

    14. Accessing, correcting and deleting your information

    Write to support@calculatedchoices.com.au. We will:

    • give you access to the personal information we hold about you, or explain why we cannot;
    • correct anything inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading;
    • delete your account and every scenario attached to it, subject to the retention periods in section 12.

    We will respond within 30 days and will not charge you for making a request. We may need to verify your identity first.

    15. Complaints

    If you think we have breached the APPs, write to support@calculatedchoices.com.au with "Privacy complaint" in the subject line. We will acknowledge within 5 business days and respond substantively within 30 days.

    If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner: oaic.gov.au, 1300 363 992, or GPO Box 5288, Sydney NSW 2001.

    16. Children

    The site is intended for anyone who owns, or is about to buy, Australian land other than the home they live in. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18.

    17. Changes to this policy

    We may update this policy. The effective date at the top changes when we do. Where a change is material we will tell you by email or by notice on the site before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the updated policy.

    18. Contact

    Privacy Officer
    XTO Pty. Ltd. (ACN [ACN NOT SET])
    Level 1, 457 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010
    support@calculatedchoices.com.au

    1. Agreement

    By using calculatedchoices.com.au (the site) or buying a pass you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the site. In these terms we, us and our mean XTO Pty. Ltd.; you means the person using the site or, where you use it on behalf of another person or an entity, both you and that person or entity.

    2. Eligibility

    You must be at least 18 and legally able to enter a contract. The site is intended for use in Australia and applies Australian law and the published land tax rates, thresholds and surcharges of the eight Australian states and territories only. If you use it from outside Australia you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for local compliance.

    3. What this service is

    Land Tax Check is an information and calculation service. It applies the published land tax rates, thresholds and surcharges of the eight Australian states and territories to figures you supply and reports what those rules produce, showing its workings and naming the fee schedule used.

    4. What it is not

    It is not financial product advice, personal advice, legal advice, tax advice, accounting advice or tax or structuring advice, and it is not a recommendation to acquire, dispose of or deal in any financial product.

    • We do not hold an Australian Financial Services Licence and are not authorised representatives of any licensee.
    • We do not know your full circumstances, objectives, financial situation or needs, and nothing produced by the site takes them into account.
    • Where the report ranks options it does so on a single arithmetic measure that deliberately ignores everything a number cannot capture — health, family circumstances, tax position, estate planning, which state the land is in and which entity holds it, and what actually matters to you.
    • We receive no commission and have no relationship with any state revenue office, accountant, tax agent, solicitor, conveyancer, lender or trustee.

    You should obtain independent, licensed advice before acting. Any decision you make is yours.

    5. Accuracy and estimates

    We take considerable care to keep the rates current and the formulas right, and every report prints the schedule it was built on. Even so:

    • All output is an estimate based on the figures you entered. If those figures are wrong, incomplete or out of date, the output will be too.
    • Your land tax is assessed by the revenue office of each state the land is in, on the land values that state's Valuer-General issues, and on the ownership recorded on the title at that state's assessment date. Those prevail over anything the site produces.
    • Rates, thresholds and caps change by legislation and indexation, and legislation can change without notice or retrospectively.
    • Projections rely on assumptions about the future — investment returns, indexation, home values, length of stay — which are inherently uncertain and will not be accurate.

    Always confirm before you act.

    6. Your responsibility for decisions

    You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for evaluating the output, for verifying it against official sources, for obtaining independent professional advice, and for every decision you make or do not make. We are not your adviser and no fiduciary or advisory relationship arises from your use of the site.

    7. Accounts

    You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done under your account. Tell us immediately at support@calculatedchoices.com.au if you suspect unauthorised use. We may suspend or close an account we reasonably believe is being used in breach of these terms.

    8. Passes, price and payment

    • A pass grants access to the full report from the moment payment is confirmed, and it does not expire. It does not renew and nothing is charged automatically. There is no subscription and no card is kept on file.
    • Prices are in Australian dollars and include GST where applicable. We may change prices at any time; the price shown when you buy is the price you pay.
    • Payment is processed by PayPal under its own terms. We do not receive your card details.
    • A pass is for personal or single household use. It is not transferable and may not be shared, resold or used to provide a service to others.

    9. Reports you export

    A report you export as a PDF or otherwise save remains yours to keep and to show to family, an adviser or a state revenue office. That licence is personal and non‑commercial. It does not permit republication, resale, or use as part of a product or service you provide to others.

    10. Refunds

    Our promise: if the calculator cannot properly model your circumstances, or something has gone wrong, write to us within 14 days of purchase and we will refund the pass. No form and no argument. We would rather refund you than have you rely on a number that does not fit.

    This is a voluntary commercial guarantee offered in addition to, and it does not limit, your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. Refunds are made to the original payment method within five business days of us accepting the request.

    11. Acceptable use

    You must not:

    • scrape, crawl, harvest, mirror or systematically extract the site or its content;
    • attempt to access the paid report engine, any account, or any data without authorisation;
    • reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the source of any part of the service;
    • interfere with the site's operation or security, or impose an unreasonable load on it;
    • resell, sublicense or commercially exploit the service or its output;
    • use the site to provide financial, legal or placement advice to third parties; or
    • use it unlawfully, or to infringe anyone's rights.

    12. Intellectual property

    All content, code, calculation methodology, report design, text and branding on the site is owned by us or licensed to us and is protected by copyright and other laws. Legislated rates and government data are not owned by anyone; our expression, arrangement and implementation of them is. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership to you.

    13. Availability

    We aim to keep the site available but do not guarantee it will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error free. We may modify, suspend or discontinue any part of it, and may perform maintenance, at any time. If we permanently discontinue the service while your pass is running, we will refund the unused portion.

    14. Third parties

    The site relies on third party services including PayPal, Google and our hosting and email providers, and links to third party sites and government resources. We are not responsible for those services or sites, their availability, their content or their terms.

    15. Australian Consumer Law

    Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. For major failures with the service, you are entitled to cancel your service contract with us and to a refund for the unused portion, or to compensation for its reduced value. You are also entitled to be compensated for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. If the failure does not amount to a major failure, you are entitled to have problems with the service rectified in a reasonable time and, if this is not done, to cancel your contract and obtain a refund for the unused portion of the contract.

    Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy conferred by the Australian Consumer Law or any other law which cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted or modified. If any part of these terms would do so, that part does not apply.

    16. Limitation of liability

    Subject always to section 15, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:

    • the site and its output are provided "as is" and "as available", and we exclude all warranties, conditions, guarantees and representations not expressly set out in these terms, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise, including as to accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability and non‑infringement;
    • we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive or consequential loss, or for any loss of profit, revenue, savings, opportunity, goodwill, data, anticipated benefit, or for any loss arising from a decision made or not made in reliance on the site, however arising and whether in contract, tort (including negligence), statute or otherwise, even if we were advised of the possibility;
    • our total aggregate liability to you for all claims connected with the site or these terms is limited, at our election, to resupplying the service or to refunding the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose; and
    • where liability cannot be excluded but can be limited, it is limited as set out above.

    You agree that this allocation of risk is reasonable given the price of the service and that the service is information rather than advice.

    Our liability is reduced to the extent your loss is caused or contributed to by you, including by entering incorrect figures, by failing to verify output against official sources, or by failing to obtain independent advice.

    17. Indemnity

    To the maximum extent permitted by law, you indemnify us against any claim, loss, liability, cost or expense (including reasonable legal costs) arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the site, or your provision of the site's output to a third party who relies on it. This does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our own breach, negligence or wilful misconduct.

    18. Termination

    You may stop using the site at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access immediately if you breach these terms. Sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20 survive termination.

    19. Privacy

    Our Privacy Policy forms part of these terms and explains how we handle personal information.

    20. Governing law

    These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. You and we submit to the non‑exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and the courts entitled to hear appeals from them.

    21. General

    • Changes. We may amend these terms. The effective date changes when we do, and material changes will be notified by email or on the site before they take effect. The terms in force when you bought a pass govern that purchase.
    • Severability. If a provision is unenforceable it is read down to the minimum extent necessary, or severed, without affecting the rest.
    • Waiver. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.
    • Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our consent. We may assign them on a sale of the business.
    • Entire agreement. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between us about the site.

    22. Contact

    XTO Pty. Ltd. (ACN [ACN NOT SET])
    Level 1, 457 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010
    support@calculatedchoices.com.au

    How much will you lose?