Understand your obligations
Meeting your land tax obligations in New South Wales.
How we work with you
You play an important role in meeting your own land tax obligations. Our job is to make it easy for you to understand your obligations and comply with them.
We will:
- be fair
- be easy to deal with
- know what we are talking about
- be accountable
- treat you with respect and ask the same in return.
You should:
- know and fulfil your responsibilities
- be open and give timely, accurate and complete information so we can resolve things faster
- keep records that support your situation and tell us when things change
- let us know about any problems sooner rather than later so we can help.
Land tax and foreign surcharge compliance program
Our tax system relies on you to honestly and voluntarily self-assess and comply with your land tax obligations.
We regularly conduct audits to make sure you’re paying the correct land tax. Sometimes errors occur because you do not fully understand legislative requirements. We will help you bring your tax up to date and understand any future land tax obligations.
The compliance program focuses on correctly applying exemptions and thresholds, and identifying land owners who have failed to register for land tax and foreign owner surcharge.
Our audits also help us identify customer education needs or issues that need improvements in policy and legislation.
Initiatives include:
- providing online services, to allow customers to view and update their land ownership details
- identifying and contacting liable landowners, who have not registered with us
- identifying and auditing land owners, who receive the benefit of multiple thresholds because of their failure to provide information relating to aggregation
- investigating and contacting customers, where information available suggests claims for exemptions are incorrect, with a focus on principal place of residence and primary production land
- contacting lessees of Crown land, who may not be aware of their land tax liability or fail to comply with their obligations
- using duties purchase transactions, to identify customers who hold land on trust
- identifying and auditing related companies, which are claiming the benefit of multiple thresholds and/or reduced tax rates by failing to declare group structures
- reviewing and investigating customers who are liable for land tax surcharge, including existing customers and new property owners
- working closely with other agencies, to better share information
- providing an education library to our customers, to better inform them of their land tax obligations
- meeting with peak industry bodies.
Common errors for land tax include:
If you know or suspect a person or a business is not complying with their land tax obligations, you can make an anonymous report by completing our feedback form.
View our 2022-23 compliance results
Contact us
If you have a question about our compliance activities contact us.