Council rates in Queensland: how the bill is built and how to object

In this article

Written by

Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →

Council rates are the property tax every owner pays and few can explain. The notice arrives two or four times a year with a land value on it, a category code, a rate expressed in cents, and a list of charges for water, waste and levies that often add up to more than the general rate itself. When a new State valuation lands and the figure jumps by a third, owners assume the bill will follow. Usually it does not, at least not in proportion.

This guide sets out how Queensland councils build a rates bill, where the State's land valuation fits, what averaging and capping do, what the other lines on the notice are, and how the two separate objections work: one to the valuation, made to the State, and one to the rating category, made to the council. It describes general rules and uses examples from councils' published 2026-27 material; every council's figures differ, and its own revenue statement is the authority for a particular property.

Two decisions by two levels of government

A rates bill is the product of two decisions made by different bodies at different times.

The first is the valuation. The State, through the Valuer-General, decides what each parcel of land is worth. Councils have no say in it. Banana Shire Council's rates page states the position in terms any council could use: the council uses the unimproved or site valuations provided by the State department, and questions about a valuation go to the department, not the council.

The second is the rate. Each council, in its annual budget, decides how much money it needs to raise from general rates and sets a rate in the dollar for each category of land so that the total comes out at that amount. The valuation distributes the burden between properties. The budget decides how heavy the burden is.

Keeping those two decisions apart is the key to reading a notice, and to knowing where to direct a complaint. An owner who thinks the land value is wrong has a case to put to the State. An owner who thinks the council is spending too much has a case to put at budget time or at an election. Neither is a ground for the other.

What the State values

The valuation is of land only. The Land Court's guidance on valuation appeals says land is valued on its unimproved value, and councils refer to the figure they receive as an unimproved or site valuation, the two bases applied to rural and non-rural land. The house, the pool and the granny flat are not part of it.

The Queensland Government's valuation pages describe the annual cycle. Values are assessed as at 1 October, notices are usually issued the following March, and the new values take effect on 30 June. Not every council area is revalued each year. In 2026 new valuations were issued on 11 March for 15 local government areas, covering more than 560,000 properties. For 2027 the State has listed 19 areas, including Logan, Moreton Bay, Toowoomba, Mackay and Gympie.

Because the effective date is 30 June, a valuation issued in March first appears on rates notices for the financial year that begins on 1 July. That timing lets a council see the new values before it sets its rates in June.

From valuation to general rate

The arithmetic of a general rate is a single multiplication. Banana Shire gives the plainest example: a property valued at $100,000, at a rate of 2.038 cents in the dollar, pays $2,038 a year, billed there as two half-yearly instalments of $1,019.

Three features of the Local Government Regulation 2012 complicate that sum, and each exists to make the outcome fairer or more stable. Brisbane City Council is the one exception: it rates under the City of Brisbane Act 2010 and the City of Brisbane Regulation 2012, so the section numbers cited in this guide are those that apply to every other Queensland council.

The first is differential rating. Sections 80 and 81 of the Regulation allow a council to sort land into categories and set a different rate in the dollar for each. A council decides the categories itself, describes them in its budget documents, and tells each owner which category their land has been placed in.

The second is the minimum general rate, provided for in section 77. A council may set a floor so that every property in a category pays at least a set amount, whatever its valuation. The reasoning is that some costs of running a council are the same for every property. Units are the usual case: a unit's share of the land under a tower can be small, and without a minimum its rates would be a fraction of a house's.

The third is the choice of which value to rate on. Section 74 defines the rateable value of land, and sections 75 and 76 let a council use a value averaged over two or three years in place of the latest valuation.

Why a higher valuation is not a higher bill

The State's valuation pages say directly that an increase in a property's value does not automatically mean an increase in rates. The reason follows from the two decisions described above.

Take an illustration with assumed figures. A council needs $100 million from general rates. If every property in the area rises in value by 20 per cent and the council's budget is unchanged, it lowers the rate in the dollar so that the total still comes to $100 million. Every owner's bill is the same as before. The valuation moved; the rates did not.

What changes a bill is relative movement. If one suburb's land rose 40 per cent while the area as a whole rose 20 per cent, owners in that suburb now hold a larger share of the total value and pay a larger share of the same total. Owners in a suburb that rose 5 per cent pay less. A revaluation reshuffles the bill between neighbours; it does not hand the council more money unless the council decides, in its budget, to raise more.

Councils do decide that, most years, because their costs rise. Townsville City Council's 2026-27 budget material shows how the pieces are reported. It says the rate in the dollar rises by 7.2 per cent for the year, and that owner-occupied residential ratepayers in its category 1 face a combined increase of 6.8 per cent in general rates and utility charges, about $5.48 a week. That increase is a budget decision. It would have been made with or without a revaluation.

Averaging and capping

Two tools soften the reshuffle for individual owners.

Averaging spreads a jump in value across years. Brisbane City Council says it averages a property's past three land valuations to find what it calls the average rateable valuation, and multiplies that figure by the rate in the dollar for the property's category. If the current valuation is lower than the average, the council uses the current valuation, so averaging there never works against the owner in a falling market. A property without three past valuations has an averaging factor applied to its current one.

An illustration with assumed figures: land valued at $300,000 for two years is revalued at $420,000. The three-year average is $340,000 in the first year of the new value, $380,000 in the second and $420,000 in the third. The owner reaches the full new figure, but in three steps.

Capping limits how much a bill can rise in one year. Section 116 of the Regulation lets a council resolve to limit the increase in rates for a class of land, and councils use it selectively. Townsville says it has capped rate increases for all category 1 properties at 20 per cent for 2026-27, describing the cap as protection for owners whose land values rose significantly. Banana Shire applies caps to certain categories and sets them out in its revenue statement.

A cap is not a discount on the council's total. What a capped owner does not pay is recovered through the rate in the dollar across the category. It buys time for the owners most affected, and after a year or more the bill catches up.

Rating categories, and why they matter

The category is the lever that most affects what a particular owner pays, because it selects the rate in the dollar.

Brisbane City Council's rating category statement for 2026-27 shows how fine the distinctions have become. A house that is the owner's own home is in category 1. A house that is let, or could be used as a non-owner-occupied or mixed-use residence, is in category 7. Units in a community titles scheme have their own pair of categories, 10 for owner-occupied and 14 for non-owner-occupied, with further sub-categories for units in the central business district and its frame that were acquired on or after 1 October 2025. Land used for transitory accommodation, the council's term for short-stay letting, is in category 23, or category 24 within a community titles scheme.

The point of separating these uses is to allow a different rate in the dollar for each. The rates themselves are not in the category statement; Brisbane sets them out in its resolution of rates and charges, and other councils in their revenue statements.

Two practical consequences follow. A change in how a property is used changes its category. An owner who moves out and lets the house, or who starts offering it for short stays, is expected to be rated accordingly, and councils ask owners to tell them. And a category is assigned by the council from the information it holds, which is not always current. A former rental that the owner has moved back into may still be rated as an investment until someone corrects the record.

The other lines on the notice

General rates are often less than half the story. A typical notice carries several other amounts, each with its own basis.

Utility charges cover water, sewerage and waste. They are charges for a service and are not based on the land's value. Townsville reports that its water, sewerage and waste charges together rose 6.5 per cent for 2026-27, an average of $151 a year for a household. In much of South East Queensland water and sewerage are billed separately by a distributor-retailer, so they do not appear on the council notice at all.

Separate and special charges and levies fund particular purposes. Brisbane's notice lists a waste utility charge, an environmental management and compliance levy and a bushland preservation levy. Councils across the State also collect an emergency management levy on behalf of the State Government, which funds the fire and emergency services; it appears on the rates notice but is not council revenue.

Interest applies to overdue amounts under section 133 of the Regulation. Brisbane's rate for 2026-27 is 12.19 per cent a year, compounding daily.

Discounts and concessions pull the other way. Section 130 allows a discount for prompt payment, and Townsville offers 5 per cent for category 1 ratepayers who pay on time. Part 10 of the Regulation lets councils grant concessions, most commonly to pensioners. Townsville's revised scheme gives new applicants $400 a year on a full pension or $200 otherwise.

Objecting to the valuation

An owner who believes the land value is wrong objects to the State, and the window opens when the valuation notice is issued, not when the rates notice arrives months later.

The Queensland Government's objections page sets out the rules. An objection must be lodged within 60 days of the issue date; for the 2026 valuations that period closed on 11 May 2026. It can be lodged by the owner, by a family member or advocate, by a body corporate or by an agent with the owner's written consent. It must state acceptable grounds and include supporting evidence, and the department checks it against the requirements of the Land Valuation Act 2010.

Good grounds are about the land's value on the valuation date: comparable sales that point to a lower figure, or a feature of the land that affects its value and may have been missed. The Land Court's guidance also notes that owners of non-rural land can claim a deduction for site improvements such as clearing or drainage. Poor grounds are about the consequences: that rates are too high, or that the owner cannot afford the increase.

A late objection can be accepted within one year only in limited circumstances, which the page lists as including the owner's mental or physical incapacity or an extreme circumstance or extraordinary emergency.

If the objection fails, the Land Court is the next step. The court's guidance says an appeal is started with a Form 03 notice of appeal, filed within 60 days of the date on the objection decision, stating the grounds, the valuation the owner contends for and the evidence. For land valued at $5 million or less a preliminary conference is held first. Each side usually bears its own costs.

A successful objection or appeal lowers the valuation from its effective date. The council then recalculates rates on the corrected figure, and the Queensland Revenue Office does the same for land tax.

Objecting to the category

The second objection is to the council and concerns only the rating category. Sections 89 to 93 of the Regulation provide for it, and the ground is narrow: that, given the council's own category descriptions, the land should be in a different category.

Brisbane's rating category statement describes the process. The owner lodges a notice of objection on the council's form within 30 days of the rate account's issue date, stating which category the land should be in and the facts that support it. If the objection succeeds, the change takes effect from the beginning of the rating quarter in which the objection was lodged. Banana Shire asks for a written objection to its chief executive officer within 30 days of the rate notice.

Two points are easy to miss. The objection cannot be used to argue that a category's rate is too high, only that the property is in the wrong one. And the rates on the notice remain due while the objection is considered. An owner who withholds payment while waiting for an answer accrues interest whatever the outcome.

Because a successful objection in Brisbane reaches back only to the start of the current quarter, delay has a cost. An owner who moved back into a former rental a year ago and has only now noticed the category will generally not recover the earlier quarters through this process.

When rates are not paid

Rates are a charge on the land, and that gives councils a remedy other creditors lack. Sections 138 to 147 of the Regulation set out a procedure under which a council can, after rates have remained overdue for a prescribed period and after formal notices, sell the land to recover them.

Councils reach that point rarely and reluctantly, and most publish hardship policies and payment arrangements for owners in difficulty. The practical message is to speak to the council early. Interest at the rate Brisbane publishes for 2026-27, 12.19 per cent compounding daily, makes an ignored notice expensive quickly.

For a buyer, the same feature explains a routine step in conveyancing. Unpaid rates stay with the land when it changes hands, so the buyer's solicitor or conveyancer searches the council's records before settlement and the amount is adjusted between the parties on the day.

Reading a notice in five minutes

The whole of this guide can be applied to a single notice with five questions.

1. What valuation is the council using, and is it the latest figure or an average? The notice or the council's website will say.
2. What category is the land in, and does the description still match how the property is used?
3. What is the rate in the dollar for that category this year, and does valuation multiplied by rate exceed the minimum general rate?
4. Which of the other lines are charges for services, and which are levies collected for the State?
5. Is a discount available for paying by the due date, and does a concession apply?

If the answer to the first question looks wrong, the remedy lies with the State and the next valuation notice starts a 60-day clock. If the answer to the second looks wrong, the remedy lies with the council and the clock is 30 days from the rate notice. Everything else is the council's budget, which is decided in public each June.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →