Stamp Duty Calculator Australia

Stamp duty in Australia explained

Stamp duty (also called transfer duty) is a tax levied by state and territory governments when you purchase property. It's one of the largest upfront costs of buying a home, often ranging from $10,000 to $50,000+ depending on the property value and state. Each state sets its own rates and thresholds.

How is stamp duty calculated in Australia?

Stamp duty is worked out on a sliding scale of value bands. Each state revenue office publishes a duty table: a fixed dollar amount for everything up to a threshold, plus a marginal rate on the portion of the price above that threshold. The plain-text formula for any band is:

Stamp duty = fixed duty for the band + (purchase price − band threshold) × marginal rate

Then, if you qualify as a first home buyer purchasing a primary residence, you subtract any exemption (which can reduce the duty to $0) or partial concession your state offers.

Worked example, $700,000 home in NSW

These are the FY 2026/2027 bands, read off Revenue NSW on 31 August 2026. A $700,000 purchase falls in the band above $387,000, which carries a fixed duty of $11,602.50 plus $4.50 per $100 over $387,000. The portion above the threshold is $700,000 − $387,000 = $313,000, so the marginal duty is $313,000 ÷ 100 × $4.50 = $14,085. Total transfer duty = $11,602.50 + $14,085 = $25,687.50.

The calculator above shows $25,688 for the same purchase: it runs exactly this arithmetic and rounds the result to the nearest dollar. Until 31 August 2026 it carried the previous year's scale and returned $26,029, which was $342 too high; that scale has been replaced. Revenue NSW indexes these bands to CPI every 1 July, so the figure here is only as current as the date above it.

A first home buyer at this price pays no duty in NSW: $700,000 is under the $800,000 full exemption, which runs to a concession up to $1,000,000 on an existing home, and $350,000 to $450,000 on vacant land. Those caps have been in place since 1 July 2023 and were confirmed on the same day.

First home buyer concessions by state

Most states and territories offer some form of stamp duty relief for first home buyers, and only the NSW, South Australian and NT schemes below were checked for this revision. South Australia's applies to eligible new homes, off-the-plan apartments, vacant land you are building on and house and land contracts, with no property value cap, for contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024; an established home does not qualify. RevenueSA refuses automated requests, so that was checked against its published rules rather than read off the site, and it is worth confirming with the office. NSW provides a full exemption for an existing home up to $800,000 with partial concessions to $1,000,000, read off Revenue NSW on 31 August 2026 and unchanged since 1 July 2023. The NT gives first home buyers no stamp duty discount at all, and this page said it gave up to $18,601 on a home under $650,000 until 1 September 2026. Those figures are real but expired: they belong to the Territory home owner discount, and section 88A of the Stamp Duty Act 1978 (NT) closes that whole part of the Act at conveyances first executed on or before 30 June 2021. A Territory first home buyer pays the full scale, and gets help as cash instead, through the HomeGrown Territory Grant of $50,000 towards a new home or $10,000 towards an established one. Confirm the grant conditions with the Territory Revenue Office, because a grant has occupancy and eligibility rules a duty scale does not. Victoria exempts properties up to $600,000 and the ACT offers a full exemption up to $1,000,000, but neither of those caps could be read on either date, so confirm them before you count on them. These concessions can save first home buyers tens of thousands of dollars, which is exactly why the cap is worth checking rather than assuming.

Additional costs to budget for

Beyond stamp duty, budget for conveyancing or legal fees, a building and pest inspection, any loan application fee your lender charges, title search fees, and the mortgage registration fee your state charges. We do not publish dollar ranges for those here: conveyancing and inspection quotes vary by state, by firm and by the property, lender fees vary by product, and registration fees are set by each state's land titles office and indexed. Get a written quote for the first two, your loan's key facts sheet for the third, and your land titles office for the last. If your LVR exceeds 80%, factor in Lenders Mortgage Insurance as well. Once you have your conveyancing quote, put it in the field above and it is added to the total.