South Australia Land Tax Calculator

Who pays land tax in South Australia

RevenueSA assesses land tax on the total taxable site value of each ownership at midnight on 30 June. An ownership is all the land held by the same registered owner or owners, so you can receive separate assessments for land you own alone, land you own jointly, land held in a trust and land held by a corporate group. Each is compared with the $936,000 general threshold (or the $25,000 trust threshold) on its own.

Land tax is charged on site value, not on the value of buildings, so apartments and shared sites are taxed on each owner’s share of the land. Your spouse’s separately owned land is not added to yours, and land owned by a company you direct or hold shares in is not included in your individual assessment.

Your share when land is jointly owned

How the title is held decides your share. Tenants in common are assessed on the shares shown on the Certificate of Title; joint tenants are treated as holding equal shares. Two joint tenants of a rental with a site value of $2,000,000 each hold a $1,000,000 share, which is added to any land they own separately.

Joint owners are jointly and severally liable for the full amount on a joint assessment. The Commissioner of State Taxation can recover all of it from any one owner, whatever their share, so co-owners should agree in writing how the bill is split.

SA land tax examples for 2026–27: general vs trust rates

Trust rates apply a lower threshold and a higher scale, so the gap is largest for mid-sized holdings. The figures below use the same rates as the calculator above, which round the value up to the next $100 as RevenueSA does.

How the bill is split across properties

When an ownership holds several properties, RevenueSA first works out the tax on the combined site value and then apportions it to each property by site value. Two investment properties with site values of $700,000 and $600,000 make $1,300,000 in total, which attracts $1,820 at general rates. The notice allocates $980 to the first property and $840 to the second. Exempt land, such as your home, is left out and gets no share.

If you buy a former investment property to live in, RevenueSA may in some cases refund the land tax you paid to the seller at settlement, provided the property becomes your principal place of residence and you do not rent out any part of it between settlement and moving in.

Trusts and corporate groups

If you are a trustee, the trust’s land is assessed separately from your own, and each trust gets its own assessment. You must notify RevenueSA within one month of acquiring land on trust; if you do not, interest and penalty tax can be charged on the extra land tax that would have applied had you notified on time.

Related companies form a corporate group whose land is assessed at general rates as if it had one owner, except land a member holds as trustee. RevenueSA uses ASIC data to track changes to a group, and a change during the year takes effect in the next year’s assessment.

Home exemption, moving and renovating

Your principal place of residence is exempt if it is where you carry out normal daily life, you occupy it on an ongoing basis (not just intend to), and it is a permanent building designed for living in; caravans and tents do not count. For jointly owned homes, only one owner needs to live there, but minor interests are tested: if the resident owner holds less than 5%, the home is not exempt unless the Commissioner is satisfied the interest was not created to reduce land tax, and between 5% and 50% it loses the exemption if the Commissioner forms the opinion that it was.

Because the exemption normally follows the home you live in at the start of the financial year, buying before you sell needs care. If you are still in the old home on 30 June, the old home is exempt and the new home may get a waiver for that year if you sell the old one within the year and do not rent either property out in the meantime. If you have already moved into the new home by 30 June, the new home is exempt and the old one can be waived on similar terms.

A substantial renovation or a new build that will become your home can be exempt for up to 2 financial years, provided you then live there for at least 12 months; you will need a Schedule 19A Statement of Compliance or Certificate of Practical Completion. A home destroyed or made uninhabitable through no fault of yours can be exempt for up to 3 financial years while you repair or rebuild. Primary production land, retirement villages, aged care and some not-for-profit land have their own exemptions.

Paying and objecting

You can pay in full by the due date or by instalments. The first instalment may include any remaining instalments from your previous assessment and any unpaid land tax for earlier years. If an instalment is missed, the unpaid remainder can become immediately payable with penalty tax and interest. You can pay by card, BPAY, at Service SA or Australia Post, or by cheque until RevenueSA stops accepting cheques after 30 June 2027; direct debit and EFT are not available.

Late payment can attract penalty tax of 25%, which the Commissioner may reduce to 5% if the full outstanding amount is paid by the due date, a 75% penalty where payment was deliberately avoided, and daily interest from the due date.

An objection to the assessment must be lodged within 60 days of being served with it. The Treasurer can allow a late objection, but not more than 12 months after the decision. If you disagree with the decision on the objection, you can appeal to the Supreme Court within 60 days. A disagreement with the site value itself is a separate objection to the Valuer-General, due within 60 days of receiving the first rate notice from any rating authority for the financial year.