Rates verified: 4 September 2026 · Sources: State Revenue Offices
Australia · All 8 states & territories
Estimate annual land tax on an investment property, by state or territory, including foreign/absentee surcharges.
Land tax estimate
Select a state and enter a land value.
Stamp duty is a one-off cost paid when you buy a property. Land tax is an ongoing annual cost for as long as you hold land above your state's threshold, assessed each year against the site or unimproved value of land you own — not the improved value including any buildings. Most states exempt your principal place of residence entirely, so land tax mainly bites on investment properties, holiday homes, vacant land, and land held through a company or trust.
The Northern Territory charges no general land tax at all. The ACT runs the opposite model: no tax-free threshold, instead applying a fixed annual charge ($1,778 from 1 July 2026) plus a marginal rate based on the property's Average Unimproved Value (AUV) to essentially all rateable land. The other six states set their own tax-free threshold and marginal rate scale — NSW's general threshold is $1,075,000, Victoria's is $50,000, Queensland's is $600,000, Western Australia's is $300,000, South Australia's is $936,000 (2026-27), and Tasmania's is $125,000. A land holding that pays nothing in Victoria could attract meaningful tax in Tasmania purely due to the lower threshold, and vice versa at higher values.
| State/territory | Foreign/absentee surcharge |
|---|---|
| NSW | 5% (residential land, no threshold) |
| VIC | 4% (absentee owner) |
| QLD | 3% above $350,000 (absentee individual) |
| WA | Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax, 0.14% above $300,000 (not a foreign surcharge) |
| SA | None identified |
| TAS | 2% (Foreign Investor Land Tax Surcharge) |
| ACT | None identified in primary source — unconfirmed, not confirmed absent |
| NT | No general land tax |
Trust-held land is often treated differently again — several states apply a lower entry threshold or a separate rate scale for land held on trust, which this calculator doesn't separately model. If your land is held on trust, treat this estimate as a general (non-trust) figure and confirm the trust-specific position with your state revenue office.
Where the other seven jurisdictions exempt land under a threshold and then apply a marginal rate above it, the ACT charges a fixed annual amount ($1,778 from 1 July 2026) on every rateable property, plus a marginal rate on the property's Average Unimproved Value (AUV — averaged over up to 5 years to smooth valuation swings). There's no equivalent "tax-free" band the way NSW or Victoria has one. This is a genuine structural difference, not a data quirk in this calculator — see the ACT Revenue Office's land tax page for the current fixed charge and AUV rates.
Trust and company land tax scales (several states apply a separate, often less generous, scale), the principal-place-of-residence exemption (this tool assumes the land is an investment holding, not your home), and land tax aggregation across multiple properties you own in the same state, which can push your combined holdings into a higher bracket than any single property would suggest. For a portfolio of properties, treat this as a per-property estimate, not your combined liability.
Take an investment property with an unimproved land value of $700,000. In Victoria, land tax is $2,250 + 0.6% of the amount above $600,000 = $2,250 + $600 = $2,850. In New South Wales, since $700,000 sits below the $1,075,000 general threshold, land tax is nil. In Tasmania, the calculation is $1,738 + 1.5% of the amount above $500,000 = $1,738 + $3,000 = $4,738. Identical land value, a roughly $4,738 spread purely due to which state the land sits in — exactly the kind of jurisdiction-specific difference that makes a single national "land tax" figure meaningless without knowing the state.
Because most people's only direct experience of property tax is council rates (charged on every property, no threshold) and stamp duty (a one-off cost at purchase, usually budgeted for), land tax is easy to underestimate when building a portfolio. It's assessed annually against your aggregated land holdings in a state, so a second or third investment property in the same state can push your combined value over the threshold even if each individual property would sit comfortably under it alone — a genuinely common trap covered in the "what this calculator doesn't model" section above.
Land tax is the ongoing "holding" cost. See the Stamp Duty Calculator for the upfront acquisition cost, and the Capital Gains Tax Calculator for the eventual disposal cost — together they cover the full buy-hold-sell property tax picture.