Revenue Office drops its card surcharge as land tax falls due

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Kooky

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

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The Queensland Revenue Office announced on 16 September 2026 that it will no longer add a surcharge to card payments from 1 October. The change covers State taxes, duties and royalties as well as fines and debts registered with the State Penalties Enforcement Registry, and it arrives while this year's land tax assessments, which began going out in mid-August, are still inside their payment periods.

The amount at stake on any one bill is small beside the tax itself. The interest lies in the timing, in what the change does and does not reach, and in a second notice the office has issued this month for the conveyancers and solicitors who lodge transfer duty on their clients' behalf.

What the Revenue Office announced

The announcement is two sentences long at its core. There will be no surcharge on card payments made from 1 October 2026, and that applies to payments of State taxes, duties and royalty, fines and State Penalties Enforcement Registry debts.

A practical note follows. The office says it will take time to update all of its notices, so some assessments and reminders will go on displaying a surcharge warning after the date. It asks payers to disregard that wording: any card payment processed on or after 1 October will not attract a surcharge, whatever the notice in hand says.

The same message now appears on the office's land tax payment page, which states that from 1 October 2026 a surcharge will no longer apply to card payments.

Why the surcharge is going

The Revenue Office's notice does not give a reason, but the date is not a coincidence. It is the day the Reserve Bank of Australia's reforms to card payments take effect across the economy.

The Reserve Bank published the conclusions of its review of merchant card payment costs and surcharging on 31 March 2026. As summarised by National Australia Bank in its guidance to merchants, the reforms have three parts: a ban on surcharges on debit, prepaid and credit card payments made through the designated card networks, starting on 1 October 2026; lower caps on the interchange fees that banks charge each other on domestic card transactions, starting the same day; and new transparency rules, under which the card schemes and large acquirers must publish average merchant service fees each quarter from 30 October 2026. Caps on interchange fees for foreign-issued cards follow on 1 April 2027.

The reasoning behind a surcharge was that the payer who chose a costlier way to pay should bear the cost. The Reserve Bank's conclusion, in the words of the bank summary, was that card payments should be simpler, fairer and easier to understand.

For a tax office the logic has an extra edge. A surcharge on a card payment of tax is, from the payer's side, a fee for paying the State on time.

What it means for a land tax bill

Land tax is where most property owners meet the Revenue Office directly. The office began issuing 2026-27 assessments on 17 August, by post and through QRO Online, and each notice carries its own dates.

Under the office's published rules, an assessment is payable 90 days after the issue date on the notice unless a payment plan has been approved. The earliest notices of this round, issued on 17 August, therefore fall due around the middle of November, and notices issued later fall due later. Every one of those due dates lies after 1 October.

The consequence is straightforward. An owner who intends to pay a 2026-27 assessment in one sum by card, and whose due date is after 1 October, pays no surcharge by waiting until that day or later, and loses nothing by doing so provided the payment is made by the due date. An owner who paid by card in August or September paid under the old arrangement; the announcement says nothing about refunds for earlier payments.

Paying on the last day is never wise with any tax bill, and the Revenue Office's rules explain why. Interest on unpaid land tax starts to accrue the day after the due date, and penalties may follow.

The instalment option was never affected

The surcharge has only ever mattered to owners who pay by card. The best-known way to spread a land tax bill does not use a card at all.

The extended payment option divides an assessment into three equal payments, at 45, 90 and 150 days after the issue date. The Revenue Office says it is available by direct debit only, that the owner must register within 35 days of the issue date, that a separate registration is needed each financial year, and that no interest is charged unless the second or third instalment is late.

For assessments issued on 17 August, the 35-day window to register closes on 21 September. Owners whose notices were issued in late August or in September have correspondingly longer. Those who miss the window can still arrange a payment plan of up to six months through QRO Online, or apply on a form for a longer one, but the office's pages state that interest applies to both.

So the removal of the surcharge changes the comparison only at the margin. Before 1 October, a card payer paid a little extra and a direct debit payer did not. After it, the choice between methods comes down to cash flow and convenience.

Duty, fines and the rest

The announcement reaches well beyond land tax. Transfer duty is the largest tax most households ever pay to the State, and while it is usually paid through the buyer's solicitor or conveyancer as part of settlement, the Revenue Office also assesses some transactions directly and collects from the taxpayer. Card payments of those assessments lose the surcharge too.

So do payments of fines and of debts registered with the State Penalties Enforcement Registry, which the Revenue Office administers. For a person paying off an overdue fine by card, often in small regular amounts, the saving is repeated on every payment.

The office's wording covers royalties as well, although the resource companies that pay them are not typically reaching for a card.

A second notice for conveyancers

The Revenue Office published another notice this month, aimed at registered self assessors, the law firms and conveyancing practices that calculate and lodge transfer duty through QRO Online. It concerns mistakes.

Where a transaction has been entered with an error, the office asks practitioners to write to it before cancelling the transaction and creating it again, because it can usually correct the entry itself. Requests go to its self assessment team by email, with the client number, the transaction number or numbers, the settlement date and time, and the relevant forms and documents.

The notice sets out the response times. Where settlement is within 24 hours, the email should be marked urgent in its subject line and will be answered the same day. Other requests are answered within 10 working days, or before the settlement date if that is sooner. The system sends one automated acknowledgement a day however many emails a practice sends. If no reply has arrived one hour before settlement, the office asks practitioners to telephone or to email again.

The notice also points to the office's data entry standards for names, dates and addresses, which it says help avoid the most common errors. It follows the start of the office's 2026-27 education program for self assessors, which opened with a session on the citizenship and residency test that has applied to home concessions since 1 August.

For buyers and sellers, the relevance is indirect but real. A duty transaction that cannot be endorsed in time delays a settlement, and a clear route for fixing an entry on the day is one fewer way for that to happen.

What happens next

From 1 October 2026, card payments to the Revenue Office are free of surcharge. Notices already printed will catch up over time.

The other dates in view belong to individual assessments. Owners who received a 2026-27 land tax notice can find its issue date at the top and count from there: 30 days to tell the office about an error, 35 days to register for the three-instalment option, 60 days to lodge an objection, and 90 days to pay in full.

Beyond the Revenue Office, the Reserve Bank's timetable continues with the first quarterly publication of merchant service fees due from 30 October 2026 and the caps on foreign-issued cards on 1 April 2027. Council rates are collected by councils under their own arrangements and are not covered by the Revenue Office's announcement.

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 →