This article is general information only and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional for advice specific to your situation.
Key takeaways
- Land tax is assessed at midnight on 30 June in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. The 2026-27 bill is locked in by what you own at midnight on 30 June 2026, even though the notice usually arrives between July and October.
- NSW and Victoria assess at midnight on 31 December the year before. The 2026 bills were set by ownership at 31 December 2025 and are landing now.
- NSW's general threshold remains frozen at $1,075,000 for a third year, with the premium threshold at $6,571,000. Because Revenue NSW averages land value over three years, rising values keep dragging owners across a static line.
- Queensland's individual threshold is $600,000, the first bracket rate is $500 plus 1.0%, and the absentee surcharge for foreign individuals is an extra 3% on land worth $350,000 or more.
- WA's threshold is $300,000, and metropolitan landowners with a land tax liability also pay the Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax at 0.14 cents per dollar of value above $300,000.
- Victoria's $50,000 floor combined with the COVID Debt Levy, legislated to 30 June 2033, layers a $500 to $975 flat surcharge plus a 0.10 percentage point rate uplift over $300,000 on top of the standard rates.
- The ATO position on timing is that land tax is deductible in the year the liability arises. The 2026-27 assessment in QLD, SA and WA arises on 30 June 2026, so it is a 2025-26 deduction.
- The 12 May 2026 Budget did not change land tax. It did, however, narrow what can be done with the loss it helps create on post-Budget established property purchases.
This article is general information only and does not constitute financial, tax, or investment advice.
For property investors in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, the most consequential date on this year's tax calendar is not 30 June for income tax. It is 30 June for land tax. What you own at midnight on Tuesday 30 June 2026 sets the entire 2026-27 land tax bill, regardless of what happens in the rest of the financial year.
The May 2026 news cycle has been dominated by the RBA's 4.35% hike on 5 May and the 12 May Budget's negative gearing changes. Land tax is the line item that gets overlooked, then arrives in spring and prompts a phone call to the accountant about whether anything could have been done last week to make it smaller.
Two regimes: 30 June states and 31 December states
Land tax is administered state by state, with two assessment-date regimes in play.
30 June states. Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia calculate land tax on land owned at midnight on 30 June. The financial year that follows is the assessment year. The 2026-27 bill is set by ownership at 30 June 2026.
31 December states. NSW and Victoria assess on land owned at midnight on 31 December the year before. The calendar year that follows is the land tax year. The 2026 NSW and Victorian assessments are already calculated, set by ownership at 31 December 2025, and the bills are landing through autumn and winter.
Tasmania assesses at 1 July on a financial-year basis. The ACT bills land tax quarterly through rates notices. The Northern Territory does not levy land tax.
A QLD, SA or WA investor has 30 days to influence the 2026-27 assessment. NSW and Victorian investors already had their 2026 assessments locked in; the next planning horizon is 31 December 2026.
Queensland: the $600,000 threshold and the 30 June fence
The Queensland Revenue Office assesses land tax on land owned at midnight on 30 June. The threshold for individuals is $600,000 of total taxable value across all Queensland land holdings. Companies and trustees have a lower threshold of $350,000.
The individual rate schedule starts at $500 plus 1.0% on the value above $600,000, scaling through five brackets to a top rate of $150,000 plus 2.25% above $10,000,000. The QRO rate page sets out the worked examples.
Three Queensland-specific issues for investors.
Surcharges. Foreign individuals pay an extra 3% absentee surcharge on land worth $350,000 or more. Foreign companies and trusts pay a 2% foreign surcharge. Both sit on top of the standard bill.
No interstate aggregation. Queensland assesses only Queensland land. An investor with $400,000 of land in Queensland and $400,000 in NSW is under the QLD threshold and pays no Queensland land tax.
Trust loadings. Land held in a trust faces a higher absolute bill because the trust threshold is $350,000, not $600,000. Restructuring before 30 June changes the bill.
South Australia: $732,000 threshold and the indexation lever
RevenueSA assesses land tax on land owned at midnight on 30 June. South Australia is the only state that indexes its threshold annually. The Valuer-General publishes an index each year, and the adjusted thresholds for the year are gazetted by 30 June.
For 2024-25 the individual threshold was $732,000, with progressive rates running from 0.5% to a top marginal rate of 2.4% above approximately $1,591,000. The 2026-27 brackets are set by the index published in the Gazette in June 2026.
Trust holdings are taxed at higher rates from a lower threshold; surcharge land tax for foreign individuals and trustees applies on top.
Western Australia: $300,000 threshold plus the MRIT
WA Treasury assesses land tax on the aggregated taxable value of all non-exempt land held in the same ownership at midnight on 30 June. Taxable value is the lesser of current unimproved value or 150% of the previous year's value, capping single-year spikes.
The threshold is $300,000, the lowest of the 30 June states. A flat $300 applies between $300,001 and $420,000, scaling through five brackets to 2.67% above $11,000,000.
The complication for Perth investors is the Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax. MRIT is a separate levy on metropolitan land with a land tax liability, charged at 0.14 cents per dollar above $300,000. A Perth investor with $1,200,000 of aggregated metropolitan land pays standard land tax plus another $1,260 of MRIT. Country WA investors pay land tax but not MRIT. Notices typically arrive between September and January.
New South Wales: the $1,075,000 threshold frozen for a third year
The 2024-25 NSW Budget froze the general and premium land tax thresholds at $1,075,000 and $6,571,000 from the 2025 land tax year. The freeze remains in place for 2026, the third consecutive year at these values, with a review flagged by 1 June 2027.
NSW averages land values over three years, which is the lever that quietly pulls more owners in every year a static threshold sits in place. A property at $1,200,000 today, $1,150,000 last year and $1,100,000 the year before has a three-year average of $1,150,000 and is liable for $1,200 in land tax, even though current value sits well clear of typical investment-grade pricing in Sydney.
The 2026 assessment was set by ownership at 31 December 2025. The next planning date for NSW is 31 December 2026.
Victoria: $50,000 floor and the COVID Debt Levy until 2033
Victoria has the lowest threshold and the most aggressive surcharge mix. Land tax applies on holdings above $50,000 ($25,000 for trusts), assessed at midnight on 31 December the year before by the State Revenue Office.
On top of standard rates, the COVID Debt Levy applies a $500 flat surcharge between $50,000 and $100,000, a $975 flat surcharge above $100,000 (or $250,000 for trusts), and adds 0.10 percentage points to the rate above $300,000 (or $250,000 for trusts). The Levy is legislated to 30 June 2033, and the 2026-27 Victorian Budget made no changes.
Victoria's absentee owner surcharge is 4% of taxable value, the highest in the country. The 2026 absentee notification cut-off was 15 January 2026. Vacant Residential Land Tax also applies state-wide, layered on top of standard land tax where relevant.
The 2026 Victorian assessment is locked in. The planning window for 2027 runs until 31 December 2026.
Tasmania and the ACT
Tasmania assesses on ownership at midnight on 30 June. The general threshold sits at $99,999 for the 2025-26 year (with foreign investor surcharge from $25,000) and the top rate is 1.5% above $499,999. The ACT does not run a stand-alone assessment for owner-occupied land; investment properties are charged land tax quarterly on top of general rates.
The ATO timing rule that catches landlords
Land tax is a deductible rental expense. The trap is timing. The ATO position, set out on the Common property expenses page, is that the deduction must be claimed in the income year the liability arises, not the year the bill is paid.
For QLD, SA and WA, the 2026-27 land tax liability arises at midnight on 30 June 2026. That is inside the 2025-26 income year by a single second. The deduction is a 2025-26 deduction, even if the assessment notice does not arrive until September and the bill is not paid until October.
For NSW and Victoria, the 2026 liability arose at midnight on 31 December 2025, also inside the 2025-26 income year. Same answer: the deduction is 2025-26, not the year of payment.
If a prior year's bill is paid in arrears, the deduction belongs in the earlier income year and the return must be amended. The risk is forgetting and losing the deduction through the four-year amendment window. A landlord who claims land tax on a cash basis is also at risk of mismatch when the ATO's property management data-matching program flags the expense against the wrong year.
Land tax inside the post-Budget mix
The 12 May 2026 Budget did not change land tax. State land tax is outside the Federal Government's reach. What the Budget did do is change the value of the deduction in some cases.
From 1 July 2027, net rental losses on established residential investment properties purchased after 7:30pm on 12 May 2026 can only be carried forward against future rental income, not offset against wages or other income in the year they are incurred. Land tax stays inside that loss bundle. If the rest of the rental schedule, after interest, depreciation and other deductions, is already close to breakeven, the addition of a meaningful land tax line can push a non-grandfathered post-Budget purchase further into a carried-forward loss rather than a refund-generating one.
For grandfathered properties, which means contracts exchanged on or before 7:30pm on 12 May 2026, and for new builds, the existing rules continue. Land tax remains a current-year deduction against all income.
The interaction is straightforward. The deduction did not change. The downstream use of the loss it can create did, but only for one specific cohort of properties bought from a specific moment.
The 30-day checklist for QLD, SA and WA investors
With 30 days to the 30 June 2026 assessment, here is the checklist worth running.
1. Audit the title register. Pull the current title for every QLD, SA or WA land holding. The assessment runs against legal ownership at midnight on 30 June, not beneficial ownership or what is on the contract.
2. Add up aggregated value. Land tax is calculated on the aggregated taxable value across all land held by the same legal entity. Two investors who each own one property at $500,000 in their own name are both under the QLD threshold. The same two properties held as tenants in common at $1,000,000 trigger a bill.
3. Settle in or settle out. Settle a QLD, SA or WA purchase or sale before midnight on 30 June 2026 and the new owner picks up the 2026-27 bill. Settle after and the seller wears it. Settlement adjustment clauses vary, so the wording matters.
4. Confirm exemptions. Principal place of residence, primary production, certain trust exemptions and the WA special disability trust exemption need to be claimed actively. Lapsed exemption status from a change of use needs to be notified to the relevant revenue office.
5. Check residency. An investor who became a non-resident during the year may attract absentee or foreign surcharge land tax. Confirm the residency status of every co-owner.
6. Book the deduction. Once 30 June passes, the 2026-27 liability in QLD, SA and WA is a 2025-26 income tax deduction. Capture it in the rental schedule even if the bill arrives after lodgement, using the prior year's bill as an estimate where needed.
What this changes for cash flow
Land tax is rarely the swing variable that decides whether to buy or sell a property. It is regularly the variable that decides how much net rent lands in the bank in a given year, especially on a portfolio held in a single name across multiple QLD or WA holdings.
A $1,200,000 aggregated QLD individual portfolio attracts a 2026-27 bill near $14,400. The same value in WA metropolitan land attracts standard land tax plus the MRIT, with the MRIT alone adding about $1,260. Under the NSW three-year average, $1,200,000 sits just above the $1,075,000 threshold and attracts about $2,100. The equivalent Victorian holding draws the $975 COVID Debt Levy flat surcharge plus the 0.10 percentage point rate uplift on top of the standard rate, putting the total bill ahead of the NSW figure on the same dollar value of land.
That is the same notional $1,200,000 of land producing materially different annual bills depending only on which side of the country it sits. The pattern can be modelled in a Propkt rental cash flow forecast so the after-land-tax yield is honest, not just the gross rent against the loan.
Bringing it together
The land tax calendar for 2026-27 is set in NSW and Victoria. It is still movable in QLD, SA and WA for 30 more days. After that, ownership at midnight on Tuesday 30 June 2026 sets the bill that arrives in spring.
The actions worth taking this week are not exotic: check the title register, confirm aggregated value, confirm exemptions are still valid, and account for the deduction in the right income year. The bill is real, the deductibility timing is fixed by the ATO, and the post-Budget changes have made the value of the deduction more conditional for one specific cohort of post-12 May 2026 established property purchases.
For an investor running a portfolio across more than one state, the cleanest way to manage it is to track land tax inside the same rental ledger that tracks rent, interest, council rates and insurance. Propkt's expense tracking and rent management tools record land tax against the liability date the ATO requires rather than the payment date that shows on the bank statement. Set it up before 30 June and the 2025-26 return will already have the deduction in the right place.