Stamp Duty Calculator: what will the government take?

Stamp duty, properly called transfer duty in New South Wales and land transfer duty in Victoria, is a state tax on the transfer of property. It is charged on the dutiable value, which is the purchase price or the market value of the property, whichever is higher. You pay it once, at or shortly after settlement, and in New South Wales it falls due within three months of the contract date.

It is progressive, like income tax. A rate applies to each slice of the value rather than to the whole amount, so moving into a higher bracket does not reprice everything below it. On a $1,200,000 purchase in New South Wales that produces duty of about $48,187, which is roughly 4.0% of the price. On the same purchase in Victoria it is $66,000, or 5.5%, because Victoria applies a flat rate across the band from $960,000 to $2,000,000.

That difference matters more than most buyers realise. Duty is almost always the largest single upfront cost of a purchase, larger than the deposit gap, larger than legal fees and inspections combined, and unlike almost every other cost it cannot be negotiated, financed separately or avoided by shopping around.

You generally cannot borrow it

Lenders assess your loan against the property’s value, not against your total cash requirement. Duty sits outside that calculation, which means it must come from your own funds on settlement day alongside the deposit and everything else.

The practical consequence is that a buyer with a 20% deposit for a $1,200,000 Sydney property needs $240,000 for the deposit and roughly another $52,000 for duty and government fees before conveyancing, inspections and moving. It is the single most common reason a pre-approval that looked comfortable turns out not to be.

There is a partial workaround: if you have equity elsewhere, or you are willing to take a slightly higher loan-to-value ratio, duty can effectively be funded by borrowing more against the property and contributing a smaller deposit. That has consequences for Lenders Mortgage Insurance, so it is worth modelling properly rather than assuming.

First home buyer concessions are worth more than the grants

In New South Wales, an eligible first home buyer pays no transfer duty at all on a home up to $800,000, and a sliding concession applies between $800,000 and $1,000,000. On a $800,000 purchase that exemption is worth $30,187. On a $900,000 purchase the concession still saves about $15,094.

The concession phases out in a straight line, which produces an effect worth understanding: between $800,000 and $1,000,000, every extra dollar of purchase price costs you about 15 cents of lost concession on top of the duty you would pay anyway. A property at $1,010,000 attracts materially more duty than one at $990,000.

Victoria works to different thresholds, with a full exemption to $600,000 and a concession to $750,000, plus a separate concessional scale for any owner-occupied home under $550,000.

What the calculator does not test

Eligibility. Every concession carries conditions: you generally must not have owned property in Australia before, you must move in within a set period and live there for a minimum term, and in some cases residency and income tests apply. Buying with a partner who has owned property before can disqualify the whole purchase in some jurisdictions and apportion the concession in others.

If a concession makes or breaks your budget, confirm eligibility with the revenue office or with us before you exchange, not after.