Does NSW Have a Vacant Property Tax or Similar Land Tax Surcharges?
NSW has no confirmed vacant-property tax like Victoria's VRLT, but it does charge ordinary land tax and a 9% foreign purchaser surcharge duty.
Does NSW have a vacant property tax like Victoria’s Vacant Residential Land Tax?
Based on the sources currently verified for this site, NSW does not have a published tax that specifically targets vacant residential property, the way Victoria’s Vacant Residential Land Tax (VRLT) does. VRLT is a distinct annual tax on homes left vacant for more than six months of the preceding year, charged on top of ordinary land tax, with rates that step up the longer a property stays empty. Nothing equivalent currently appears in New South Wales’ land tax framework.
As at July 2026, no dedicated vacancy-specific land tax page appears anywhere in Revenue NSW’s Land Tax section (checked directly), so “NSW has no equivalent” remains the current best understanding. That is an absence of a published rule rather than a page that explicitly states the negative, so this is kept as an open placeholder rather than asserted as a fully confirmed fact. If a vacancy-specific NSW tax exists or is later introduced, it would need its own separate confirmation before a rate or threshold could be stated here.
What NSW does have — confirmed and current — is its ordinary land tax, which applies to land you own above a threshold (investment property included), and a one-off surcharge duty charged to foreign purchasers at the time of purchase. Neither of those is a “vacant property tax” in the Victorian sense. The next two sections cover each.
What Victoria’s VRLT actually taxes, for comparison
Because VRLT is the best-known vacancy tax in Australia, it’s worth being precise about what it covers before ruling NSW in or out of having something similar. VRLT is assessed on a property’s Capital Improved Value (CIV) — broadly, the value of the land plus what’s built on it — not the land value alone that ordinary land tax uses. There’s no tax-free threshold: rates start at 1% of CIV in the first year a property is liable, rise to 2% in a second consecutive year, and 3% from a third consecutive year onward, per SRO Victoria’s current VRLT rates.
From 1 January 2026 the tax also reaches some undeveloped land in metropolitan Melbourne and unsold new residential land that’s stayed vacant for years. Exemptions exist for genuine holiday homes, homes mid-renovation within the same calendar year, and properties that changed hands during the year. All of this is Victoria-specific — none of it applies in NSW under what’s currently confirmed.
What ordinary land tax does NSW charge on an investment property?
Land tax is an annual state government tax on the value of the land you own — separate from council rates, and, in most cases, not charged on the home you actually live in (a principal place of residence exemption is the general rule in every state, though the exact test differs state to state). An investment property doesn’t usually get that exemption, so land tax is a genuine ongoing holding cost for an NSW investor to budget for, distinct from a one-off purchase cost like stamp duty.
In NSW, the general tax-free threshold is $1,075,000 of combined taxable land value — nothing is payable below that. Above the threshold, the scale is $100 plus 1.6% of the value over $1,075,000, up to a premium threshold of $6,571,000; above that, it’s $88,036 plus 2% of the value over $6,571,000. Under the 2024-25 NSW Budget, these thresholds were frozen rather than indexed annually as they historically were, so the same figures carry through the current land tax year. As at July 2026, that freeze is still in effect, but a future state budget could change it — check Revenue NSW’s own thresholds-and-rates page before relying on these figures for a specific year.
Tax outcomes depend on your circumstances — speak with a registered tax agent before acting.
Does NSW add a land tax surcharge for foreign owners?
Yes — in two separate ways. NSW charges eligible foreign persons a surcharge purchaser duty of 9% of a residential property’s dutiable value, on top of ordinary transfer duty, payable once at the time of purchase. Separately, NSW also charges an ongoing surcharge land tax on foreign persons who continue to own residential land in NSW, on top of whatever ordinary land tax already applies. As at July 2026, that surcharge land tax rate is 5% of the property’s land value each year (it was 4% for the 2023 and 2024 land tax years, and 2% from 2018 to 2022), with no tax-free threshold of its own — it applies to the full land value, even below the ordinary land tax threshold.
The two costs work differently: the 9% duty is paid once, at settlement, while the surcharge land tax is paid every year the property remains foreign-owned. NSW isn’t unusual in charging both — Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania also layer their own ongoing annual foreign or absentee-owner land tax surcharge on top of a one-off purchase-duty surcharge. The ACT runs the opposite way entirely: it has no purchase-duty surcharge at all, only an ongoing annual land tax surcharge of 0.75% of a property’s Average Unimproved Value each year. Western Australia and South Australia currently impose only the one-off purchase-duty version, with no ongoing annual equivalent confirmed. Definitions of “foreign person”/“absentee owner”, exemptions and refund rules differ by state, so anyone this could apply to needs to check the relevant revenue office directly rather than assume NSW’s rules mirror another state’s.
How does NSW compare with other states on vacant-property and foreign-owner surcharges?
The table below draws only on independently confirmed figures, as at July 2026, and now covers all eight Australian states and territories, including South Australia and the Northern Territory.
| State/territory | Ordinary land tax (individuals) | Vacant-property-specific tax | One-off foreign purchaser duty surcharge (at purchase) | Ongoing annual foreign-owner land tax surcharge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | Tax-free threshold $1,075,000; then $100 + 1.6% up to $6,571,000, then $88,036 + 2% above that (thresholds frozen since the 2024-25 Budget) | No confirmed equivalent — see above | 9% | 5% of land value each year (2025 onwards; 4% for 2023–24; 2% for 2018–22), no threshold |
| VIC | Tax-free threshold $50,000 (a temporary COVID-19 debt levy is layered on above that — see SRO Victoria for the current bands) | Yes — VRLT: 1% of CIV in year one, 2% in year two, 3% from year three, no threshold | 8% | 4% of land value each year (from 2024; 2% for 2020–23) — “absentee owner surcharge” |
| QLD | Tax-free threshold $600,000 | No confirmed equivalent | 8% | 3% on taxable land value above $350,000 — “absentee surcharge” |
| SA | Tax-free threshold $936,000 (indexed annually by RevenueSA gazette); then $0.50 per $100 up to $1,504,000, rising to $2.40 per $100 above $3,504,000 — see RevenueSA for the full scale | No confirmed equivalent | 7% | No confirmed ongoing equivalent |
| WA | Tax-free threshold $300,000 (Perth-metro owners may also owe the separate 0.14% Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax) | No confirmed equivalent | 7% | No confirmed ongoing equivalent |
| TAS | Tax-free threshold $125,000 | No confirmed equivalent | 8% | 2% of assessed land value each year (since 1 July 2022) — “Foreign Investor Land Tax Surcharge” |
| ACT | No tax-free threshold — a fixed $1,778 charge plus a scale based on Average Unimproved Value | No confirmed equivalent | None | 0.75% of Average Unimproved Value each year (since 1 July 2018) |
| NT | None — the NT has no land tax at all | Not applicable — there’s no land tax to attach a vacancy surcharge to | None | None |
Land tax is set by each state and territory separately and moves at each government’s own budget — none of these figures is a national rule. Always confirm the current figure with the relevant state revenue office before acting on it, rather than treating this table as fixed.
What land tax and surcharges mean for an investor’s cash flow
None of these taxes tell you whether a particular property is a good investment — that depends on far more than the tax line alone, and weighing that up isn’t something a general article can do for you. What they do is add to the ongoing cost side of holding an investment property, alongside things like insurance, maintenance and property management fees, which is worth factoring into cash flow planning rather than budgeting for stamp duty alone and stopping there. Our guide to cash flow positive versus negatively geared property looks at how ongoing costs like this interact with rental income more broadly.
If you’re weighing up how to gain exposure to residential property without personally managing land tax registrations, rates notices and state-based thresholds for a whole property, fractional ownership is one structure worth understanding as an alternative.
Where to check the current NSW settings before you rely on them
Every figure in this article is tied to state budgets that change, so none of it should be treated as fixed. Revenue NSW’s own thresholds-and-rates page is the primary source for the NSW figures above, and each other state’s revenue office is the primary source for its own row in the table. For a broader look at how property investment works before getting into state-specific costs like this, our guide to what property investment is in Australia covers the mechanics, costs and risks from the start.
This article provides general information only — see the disclaimer below.
