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Taxes, duties, levies and royalties
  • About

    How to meet your obligations and make payments.

  • Land tax

    Paying tax on property you own.

  • Payroll tax

    Calculate and lodge tax on the wages paid by your business.

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    Calculate and pay transfer (stamp) duty on purchases.

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    We collect and audit mineral resources royalties.

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    We collect gaming and wagering taxes.

  • Health insurance levy

    For businesses that provide health benefits to contributors.

  • Insurance duty

    Providers of general and life insurance pay a duty.

  • Parking space levy

    Aims to reduce traffic congestion in Sydney's busiest areas.

  • Foreign buyers and land owners

    Surcharge fees that apply to residential land.

  • Motor vehicle duty

    Duty applies to some vehicle registrations and transfers.

  • Passenger service levy

    Applies to authorised taxi and booking service providers.

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    We collect funds to support emergency services in NSW.

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    How government and the private sector compete

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In this section
  1. Lodging applications
  2. Pay your transfer duty
  3. Buying a property
  4. First home buyers
  5. Buying off-the-plan
  6. Surcharge purchaser duty
  7. Buying a business
  8. Deceased estate transfers
  9. Family transfers
  10. Landholder duty
  11. Compliance
  12. 2019/20 NSW bushfire duty relief scheme

Compliance

Our compliance program focuses on individual transactions and electronic duties returns (EDR) clients who assess documents on behalf of customers.

Initiatives include:

  • conducting audits on EDR clients, to ensure the conditions of approval are being adhered to, assessments are accurate, records are kept, systems and procedures adhere to the directions for using electronic duties returns PDF, 788.43 KB, and transactions are identified where duty has not been paid, or has been underpaid
  • reviewing high-value property transfers
  • identifying and investigating transfers of motor vehicle registrations, where the correct value has not been used to calculate the duty payable
  • reviewing and investigating property transfers with a dutiable value over $3m, which may be liable to premium property duty if the correct amount of duty has not been paid
  • reviewing and investigating recipients of the new home grant, where information available indicates that the grant has been paid to ineligible applicants
  • using a range of data-matching initiatives, based on internal and external data, to ensure compliance by identifying transactions that have not been lodged for assessment
  • reviewing and investigating landholder lodgements
  • investigating referrals for landholder transactions, where the correct duty may not have been paid
  • reviewing and investigating exemptions and concessions, including corporate reconstructions
  • reviewing and investigating transactions involving surcharge purchaser duty.

Common errors for duties include:

  • not reviewing the purchaser/transferee declaration PDF, 176.04 KB, to determine whether customers are ordinarily resident or foreign
  • not aggregating transactions
  • not complying with legislative and evidentiary requirements
  • not following EDR procedures, including record-keeping
  • using valuations that may not reflect accurate dutiable values when processing a transaction
  • failing to declare the correct dutiable value when transferring the registration of a motor vehicle
  • processing vacant land and non-residential transactions as off-the-plan
  • not including GST in assessing liability for duty
  • applying exemptions or concessions incorrectly when making assessments.

Case study: surcharge purchaser duty – temporary resident

The contract to purchase a home was signed on 14 October 2016. The buyer was granted a student guardian visa on 1 January 2016 and remains on this visa today. The visa expires on 1 January 2020. The buyer has lived in Australia since 1 July 2015 and has not left the country since.

The buyer is liable for surcharge purchaser duty, because they hold a temporary visa and their continued presence in Australia is subject to a limitation imposed by law.

We were not satisfied that the buyer was ordinarily a resident in Australia at the contract date, so we issued a notice of assessment for surcharge purchaser duty, plus interest and penalties.

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    2019/20 NSW bushfire duty relief scheme

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