Same price. Eight different tax bills.

How each state and territory calculates duty

Every jurisdiction runs the same basic machine. Duty is charged on the dutiable value — the greater of what you pay and what the property is worth — through a sliding scale of marginal rates. What differs is where the brackets sit, how steep the top of the scale is, and which concessions cut across it.

Three structural quirks are worth knowing before you read the tables, because they are where calculators most often go wrong:

• Victoria, the ACT and the Northern Territory switch to flat rates at the top. Above a threshold, the rate applies to the whole price rather than the excess. One dollar over the line can cost thousands.
• Only NSW indexes its brackets. Its thresholds and premium threshold move with Sydney CPI every 1 July. Everywhere else the brackets move only when a parliament moves them, so ordinary price growth quietly pushes buyers up the scale.
• Only NSW charges a premium rate on expensive homes — 7% above $3,870,000, and only on residential land. Commercial buyers in NSW stay on the 5.5% top bracket no matter the price.

New South Wales

NSW uses one general scale for everything — houses, offices, farms, business assets — with a separate premium bracket bolted on for expensive residential land. The thresholds below are the indexed 2026–27 figures.

Source: Revenue NSW, transfer duty rates 2026–27.

Concessions. The First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme exempts homes up to $800,000 and tapers to nothing at $1,000,000; for vacant land the thresholds are $350,000 and $450,000. Off-the-plan buyers get a deferral, not a discount — duty is pushed out to the earlier of 15 months, settlement or assignment. Deceased-estate transfers in conformity with a will attract $100. Corporate reconstructions pay 10% of the duty otherwise due. NSW has no pensioner concession. Foreign purchasers of residential property pay 9% surcharge purchaser duty on top.

Victoria

Victoria runs two residential scales: a general one, and a lower principal-place-of-residence scale that stops dead at $550,000. The general scale has the single most awkward feature in Australian duty — between $960,000 and $2,000,000 it charges a flat 5.5% of the entire price, not a marginal rate.

Source: State Revenue Office Victoria, land transfer duty current rates (contracts from 1 July 2021).

Concessions. First home buyers pay nothing to $600,000 and a proportional share of full duty from $600,001 to $750,000. Pensioners and concession-card holders get the same thresholds. The temporary off-the-plan concession is the standout: for contracts to 20 April 2027 it strips construction costs incurred after the contract date out of the dutiable value, with no price cap and no buyer restriction — investors, companies and trusts all qualify, provided the property is a strata lot. Regional commercial and industrial property gets a 50% concession. Foreign purchasers pay 8% additional duty on residential.

Queensland

Queensland has a general scale and a materially cheaper home concession scale for anyone buying somewhere to live — not just first home buyers, and with no price cap. First home buyers then get a further deduction on top.

Source: Queensland Revenue Office, transfer duty rates and concession rates.

Concessions. Buying an established first home, you start at the home-concession rate and subtract a first home concession of up to $17,350, which produces nil duty to about $700,000 and disappears at $800,000. Buying a new home or off-the-plan, or vacant land to build on, a first home buyer pays nothing at all — with no value cap, for contracts dated on or after 1 May 2025. That is the most generous new-build concession in the country. From 1 August 2026 all the home concessions require Australian citizenship, permanent residency or specified foreign retiree status. Foreign acquirers of residential land pay 8% AFAD.

Western Australia

WA folded its old residential scale into the general scale in 2022, so one table now covers houses and warehouses alike. The first home owner rate was overhauled on 7 May 2026 — the old metropolitan-versus-regional split is gone and a single statewide threshold applies.

Source: RevenueWA, transfer duty assessment and first home owner rate fact sheet.

Concessions. A separate concessional rate applies to homes and WA business assets under $200,000. The off-the-plan concession is unusually valuable and, like Victoria’s, is not restricted to owner-occupiers: up to 100% of duty on a pre-construction strata or survey-strata contract, capped at $50,000, tapering to 50% above $900,000, for contracts to 30 June 2028. Foreign buyers of residential property pay 7% foreign transfer duty; commercial property is exempt from it.

South Australia

South Australia is the outlier that matters most to commercial investors: it abolished duty on non-residential, non-primary-production land entirely on 1 July 2018. On the residential side its scale reaches the top bracket at just $500,000, so SA gets expensive early.

Source: RevenueSA, rates of stamp duty and qualifying land provisions.

Concessions. First home buyers pay no duty at all on a new home, an off-the-plan apartment or vacant land, with no value cap — but established homes get nothing. From 25 March 2026 a seniors downsizing relief does the same thing for buyers aged 60 and over moving to a smaller new home, in full up to $2,000,000 (or $1,200,000 for land) and partially just above. Foreign purchasers of residential land pay a 7% surcharge.

Tasmania

Tasmania has the gentlest top bracket on the mainland scales — 4.5% — but for 2026–27 it also has the thinnest concession list, because two of its headline measures lapsed on 30 June 2026 and were not renewed.

Source: State Revenue Office Tasmania, rates of duty (scale effective from 21 October 2013).

Concessions. The 100% first home exemption for established homes up to $750,000 applied only to transactions settling to 30 June 2026 and was not extended in the May 2026 Budget; the 50% off-the-plan concession closed to agreements after the same date; the pensioner downsizer concession ended a year earlier. What is left is the general set — intergenerational rural transfers, relationship breakdowns, corporate reconstructions. In their place the First Home Owner Grant was lifted to $20,000 for 12 months from 1 July 2026, which is a grant on new homes, not duty relief. Foreign investors pay 8% on residential and 1.5% on primary production land.

Australian Capital Territory

The ACT is a decade and a half into a 20-year programme of abolishing duty and replacing the revenue with general rates. It shows: there are two residential scales, a large duty-free threshold on commercial property, and from 1 July 2026 a first home concession with no price cap and no income test at all.

Source: ACT Revenue Office, conveyance duty for non-commercial and commercial property, 2026–27.

Concessions. From 1 July 2026 the Home Buyer Concession Scheme pays the whole bill: $0 duty for anyone who has not held an interest in property in the previous five years, on a new home, an established home or vacant land, at any price and any income. The pensioner, disability, off-the-plan unit and newly-unit-titled exemptions all had their value caps removed on the same date. The ACT charges no foreign purchaser duty surcharge — though it does levy a 0.75% foreign ownership land tax surcharge.

Northern Territory

The Territory is the only jurisdiction that calculates duty with an actual algebraic formula rather than a bracket table, and only below $525,000. Above that it is a flat percentage of the whole price, with two cliffs.

Source: Northern Territory Territory Revenue Office, stamp duty information sheet I-SD-002.

Concessions. There is no first home duty concession in the NT any more — it was replaced by grants ($50,000 HomeGrown Territory for a first new home, $30,000 FreshStart for everyone else buying new). What remains, and it is large, is the House and Land Package Exemption: buy a new house-and-land package from a building contractor in a single transaction, live in it, and duty is nil with no value cap, for contracts to 30 June 2027. The NT charges no foreign purchaser surcharge and has no land tax at all.

Commercial and industrial property is a different animal

Most people assume commercial property is taxed harder than residential. On duty, the opposite is usually true — not because the rates are lower, but because almost every surcharge and premium is aimed squarely at housing.

Four things separate the two:

• South Australia has abolished commercial duty outright. Since 1 July 2018 there is no duty on a transfer of non-residential, non-primary-production land, at any value. A $5,000,000 warehouse in Adelaide costs $0 in duty; the same building in Melbourne costs $305,000.
• Victoria has replaced it with an annual tax. Under the commercial and industrial property tax reform, the first qualifying sale on or after 1 July 2024 pays full duty one final time; ten years later the property moves to a flat 1% per year of its site value and never pays duty again. That changes the arithmetic of holding versus trading Victorian commercial assets quite fundamentally.
• The ACT gives commercial buyers a $2.1 million duty-free threshold — but it is a cliff, not a step. At $2,100,000 you pay nothing; at $2,100,001 you pay 5% of the whole price, which is $105,000.
• Foreign purchaser surcharges are residential-only in every state that has one. A foreign buyer pays 7–9% extra on a house and nothing extra on a factory.

New builds, off-the-plan and vacant land

Every government in the country is now using duty to steer capital toward new supply rather than existing stock. The result is that on identical money, a new dwelling and an established one can attract wildly different bills — and in four jurisdictions the difference for a first home buyer is the entire tax.

Three of those concessions are not limited to first home buyers, which is the part investors routinely miss:

• Victoria’s temporary off-the-plan concession has no price cap and no buyer test. Companies, trusts and investors all qualify on a strata lot, for contracts to 20 April 2027.
• WA’s off-the-plan concession wipes up to 100% of duty on a pre-construction strata contract, capped at $50,000, tapering to 50% above $900,000, to 30 June 2028. On a $900,000 apartment that is a $18,733 saving for an investor.
• The NT’s House and Land Package Exemption is uncapped, but requires you to live in it.

Vacant land is treated as its own category almost everywhere, usually with lower thresholds — NSW exempts first home buyers to $350,000, WA to $450,000 — because duty is charged on the land alone and the building contract sits outside the dutiable value. Buying land and building separately is, in several states, the cheapest legitimate way through the duty scale.

Every concession, jurisdiction by jurisdiction

Beyond the headline schemes, every jurisdiction carries a similar tail of relief that rarely gets discussed but is worth real money in the right circumstances: transfers between spouses, transfers on relationship breakdown, deceased-estate transfers in conformity with a will (a flat $100 in NSW), corporate reconstructions charged at 10% of the normal duty in NSW and Victoria, intergenerational family-farm exemptions in every state, and charity exemptions. If a transaction looks like one of those, it is worth checking before you assume the full scale applies.

The investor’s read: how to actually use this

Stamp duty is a sunk cost paid on day one out of cash that cannot usually be borrowed. It is not deductible against income in the year you pay it — it goes into the capital gains tax cost base and only comes back when you sell. So the practical question is never “how much is the duty”; it is “how much growth does this property have to deliver before I am square again, and could that same money have bought the same asset for less somewhere else?”

Six things follow from the numbers on this page.

1. Compare after-duty entry cost, not price. Two properties at the same headline number in different states are not the same investment. Add duty, and in the worst-case pairing you are 2% of the purchase price behind before you have collected a dollar of rent. Over a five-year hold at 5% growth, that difference is close to a full year of capital gain.

2. Duty punishes turnover, so it rewards patience. Every transaction resets the meter. An investor who buys and sells three properties over a decade in Victoria or the NT can pay 15% of one property’s value in duty alone. The higher the duty regime, the longer the optimal hold, and the more a strategy built on renovating and flipping has to clear before it works.

3. If you invest in commercial, the state choice is enormous. South Australia charges nothing and the ACT charges nothing under $2.1 million. On a $2,000,000 purchase that is a $110,000 swing against Victoria. Victoria’s reform is the one to watch closely: after the final duty payment and the ten-year transition, a Victorian commercial asset pays 1% of site value every year forever, which is better for a buyer who trades and worse for one who holds for thirty years.

4. The off-the-plan concessions in Victoria and WA are open to investors and they are large. Most coverage frames off-the-plan relief as a first home buyer measure. In those two states it is not. On a $900,000 WA apartment bought pre-construction, an investor’s duty falls from $37,466 to $18,733. In Victoria the concession has no cap at all. Both have hard expiry dates — April 2027 and June 2028 — and both come with the ordinary off-the-plan risks of settlement valuation and completion delay, which is a separate conversation from the tax.

5. Foreign buyers should model the surcharge before the shortlist. A foreign purchaser buying a $900,000 house pays $115,687 in NSW and $31,050 in the ACT — because the ACT and the NT levy no foreign purchaser surcharge at all, and because the surcharge in NSW is 9% of the whole price on top of ordinary duty. That is a 12.85% entry tax versus 3.45%. Commercial property escapes the surcharge everywhere.

6. In the ACT, duty on a rental is deductible — a genuine quirk worth knowing. Because ACT land is held under 99-year Crown leases rather than freehold, the ATO’s rental properties guidance treats stamp duty, preparation and registration costs on the lease as deductible to the extent you use the property as a rental, rather than as a capital cost. Nowhere else in Australia does that apply. Confirm the timing of the claim with your accountant, but it makes the ACT’s already-low investor duty lower again in after-tax terms.

None of this argues for buying in a state because its duty is cheap. Duty is a one-off cost of a few per cent; the location, the yield and the growth rate matter far more over any sensible holding period. But it belongs in the model at the start, not as a surprise at settlement — and knowing where the concessions sit is knowledge that makes you richer.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Revenue NSW — transfer duty rates 2026–27, First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme, surcharge purchaser duty. State Revenue Office Victoria — land transfer duty current rates, principal place of residence rates, first home buyer exemption, off-the-plan concession, commercial and industrial property tax, foreign purchaser additional duty. Queensland Revenue Office — transfer duty rates, concession rates, home and first home concessions, first home (new home) concession, first home vacant land concession, additional foreign acquirer duty. RevenueWA — transfer duty assessment, first home owner rate fact sheet, off-the-plan duty concession, foreign transfer duty, 2026–27 housing taxation package. RevenueSA — rates of stamp duty, first home buyer relief, seniors downsizing relief, qualifying land, foreign ownership surcharge. State Revenue Office Tasmania — rates of duty, first home buyer duty relief, foreign investor duty surcharge. ACT Revenue Office — conveyance duty for non-commercial and commercial property, Home Buyer Concession Scheme, off-the-plan and newly unit-titled exemptions, pensioner and disability schemes. Northern Territory Revenue Office — stamp duty information sheet I-SD-002, House and Land Package Exemption, HomeGrown Territory and FreshStart grants. Australian Taxation Office — rental properties guide, rental expenses. All figures checked against the revenue offices’ own published rates and calculators in September 2026.

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