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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →The Queensland Revenue Office confirmed on 31 July 2026 that, for transactions signed on or after 1 August, a buyer claiming a transfer duty home concession must be an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or a specified foreign retiree. The notice, addressed to the solicitors and conveyancers who assess duty on the State's behalf, says temporary residents will generally not be eligible and will pay duty at the standard rate, with the 8 per cent additional foreign acquirer duty on top.
Most of the attention so far has gone to first home buyers, because the first home concessions are the largest. The same test, however, now sits in front of the ordinary home concession, the one available to people who have owned before: the family trading up, the couple downsizing, the worker moving between regions. This article looks at that side of the change, and at what the people who lodge duty returns have been asked to do differently.
Queensland Revenue Office home concession and transfer duty rate pages, as published in July 2026.
What the Revenue Office announced
The notice of 31 July is short. From 1 August 2026, it says, buyers seeking the home concessions must be Australian citizens, permanent residents or specified foreign retirees, a category it describes as certain holders of legacy visas. It names three concessions: the home concession, the first home concession and the concession for vacant land on which a first home will be built.
The line is drawn by the date the transaction is signed. A contract signed on or before 31 July is assessed under the earlier conditions even if it settles weeks later; a contract signed from 1 August meets the new test. The Revenue Office states plainly that earlier contracts are unaffected.
Related readLand tax bills for 2026-27 are going out: who gets one and whyThe measure is not a surprise to the profession. It was among the revenue measures of the 2026-27 State Budget in June, and the Revenue Office's notice is the operational step that follows: the forms, the online system and the calculator have all been changed so that the question is asked every time.
The concession that movers use
The home concession is the least talked-about of Queensland's duty reliefs, and probably the most widely used. The Revenue Office describes it as a reduction in transfer duty for a person buying a residence to live in, and says it can be claimed by someone who has owned a home before. It saves up to $7,175.
The mechanics are simple. A concessional rate applies to the first $350,000 of the home's value, and the standard rates apply to everything above that. The standard scale, as published by the Revenue Office, charges $1,050 plus $3.50 for each $100 over $75,000 on values up to $540,000. On a $350,000 slice that comes to $10,675. Take away the maximum saving of $7,175 and the duty on that first slice under the concession is $3,500, which is 1 per cent of $350,000.
Because the saving is attached to the first $350,000 only, it is the same dollar figure for almost every home sold in Queensland today. A buyer paying $600,000 and a buyer paying $1.6 million both receive $7,175 off, provided they qualify. That is why the concession matters more as a matter of principle than as a share of the price: it is a flat acknowledgement, written into the duty scale, that a home to live in is taxed a little more lightly than an investment.
Related readRevenue Office drops its card surcharge as land tax falls dueThe arithmetic for a buyer on a temporary visa
The change is easiest to see with a worked example. Assume a buyer on a temporary visa signs a contract for an $800,000 house in which they will live, and has owned property before, so that no first home relief is in play. The figures below are illustrative and use the Revenue Office's published scale.
Standard transfer duty on $800,000 is $17,325 plus $4.50 for each $100 above $540,000. The excess is $260,000, which adds $11,700, for a total of $29,025. With the home concession the bill would be $7,175 lower, at $21,850.
| Item | Signed by 31 July | Signed from 1 August |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer duty | $21,850 (home concession) | $29,025 (standard rate) |
| Additional foreign acquirer duty at 8% | $64,000 | $64,000 |
| Total | $85,850 | $93,025 |
Illustrative figures computed from the Queensland Revenue Office transfer duty scale and home concession page. Assumes the buyer is a foreign person for the additional duty in both cases.
Two things stand out. The first is that the new cost is $7,175, no more: the change removes a concession, it does not add a rate. The second is that for this buyer the far larger sum was already there. Additional foreign acquirer duty is charged at 8 per cent of the value of residential land acquired by a foreign person, and on $800,000 it is $64,000. The Revenue Office's notice reads the two together, saying temporary residents pay the standard rate plus the additional duty.
Whether a particular visa holder is a foreign person for the additional duty is a separate question with its own definitions, and it is not altered by the 1 August change. What has changed is that the home concession test and the foreign acquirer test now point the same way for most temporary residents.
What conveyancers and solicitors now have to ask
In Queensland most transfer duty is not assessed by the Revenue Office directly. Registered self assessors, usually the buyer's solicitor or conveyancer, work out the duty, endorse the documents and lodge the transaction through QRO Online. The 31 July notice is written for them.
Related readHow Queensland values your land: site value, the cycle and objectionsIt says Forms D2.1 and D2.7, two of the declarations a buyer completes to claim a home concession, have been updated with an eligibility question: whether the transferee was an Australian citizen, permanent resident or specified foreign retiree when the transaction occurred. QRO Online and the public duty calculator require the same confirmation for any transaction dated after 31 July 2026.
In practice this adds one line of enquiry to a file, and one piece of evidence. A practitioner who previously needed to know only whether the client would live in the property now needs to know, and be able to show, the client's citizenship or visa status on the contract date. For the overwhelming majority of Queensland buyers the answer is a passport or a citizenship certificate. The files that will need more care are those where status is changing: a permanent visa applied for but not yet granted on the day the contract is signed, for instance. The notice ties eligibility to the time of the transaction, so a grant that arrives before settlement but after signing is a matter to raise with the Revenue Office and not to assume.
The question is asked of the transferee, on the contract date
The updated forms ask about the buyer's status when the transaction occurred. A contract signed before 1 August 2026 is assessed under the earlier conditions, whatever the settlement date.
The conditions that have not moved
Everything else about the home concession reads as it did. The Revenue Office's page lists the obligations a buyer takes on by claiming it. The buyer must be an individual, must move in and occupy the home within one year of settlement, and must live there as their principal residence.
There are also things the buyer must not do. The home cannot be sold or transferred before the buyer moves in. It cannot be leased, rented or handed over to someone else's exclusive possession before the buyer moves in, and the whole property cannot be rented out within one year of the buyer occupying it. Renting out part of the home after moving in is allowed, the page says, as long as the buyer continues to live there.
Related readSunshine Coast rates rise 9.7 per cent after a 24 per cent land revaluationA buyer whose plans change is expected to say so. The Revenue Office directs them to Form D2.4, which asks for a reassessment, and warns that further duty, interest and penalties may follow. That has always been the quiet edge of a concession claimed at settlement: it is granted on a promise about the following twelve months.
Why the State drew the line here
Seen beside the rest of Queensland's duty settings, the change closes an inconsistency more than it opens a new policy. Since the additional foreign acquirer duty was introduced, a foreign person buying a home has paid a surcharge on the grounds that residential land should favour local buyers, while at the same time remaining able to claim a concession designed to favour owner-occupiers. From 1 August the concession follows the same logic as the surcharge.
It also leaves a deliberate exception. Specified foreign retirees, described by the Revenue Office as certain legacy visa holders, keep access to the concessions. The carve-out means a group of retirees who settled under older visa arrangements is treated, for this purpose, in the same way as permanent residents.
For the industry, the practical effect is small in number and real in the individual case. Agents working with clients newly arrived on skilled or student visas will find that the duty estimate has moved by $7,175 for an established home, and by a great deal more where a first home concession would otherwise have applied. Buyers in that position are best served by an early duty estimate from whoever will lodge the transaction.
What the Revenue Office is doing next
The change is the first subject of the Revenue Office's 2026-27 self assessor education program. The office says registered self assessors can register for webinars covering what they are permitted to assess, how documents are endorsed, how transactions are lodged online and what their professional responsibilities are, and that the opening session dealt with the home concession eligibility rules. It also plans regular emails on the questions it is asked most often.
That program is worth noting for a reason beyond this one measure. Self assessment places the first judgement about a concession with a private practitioner, and the Revenue Office's ability to review that judgement later is what keeps the system honest. A new eligibility test is exactly the kind of change that produces honest mistakes in its first months, and the office has signalled that it would sooner prevent them than reassess them.
For buyers, the dates are the whole story. A contract signed up to 31 July 2026 is outside the test. A contract signed from 1 August is inside it, and the answer to one question on a form now decides whether $7,175 comes off the duty bill.
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.
