If you own investment property in South Australia, the RevenueSA land tax notice that lands in your inbox from October is one of the least understood bills you will pay all year. Site values across Adelaide have risen sharply again, the 2026-27 thresholds have moved with them, and since the aggregation reforms of 2020 the way your land is grouped together matters as much as how much of it you own. Most of the land tax problems we see in our Myrtle Bank office come down to a holding structure chosen years ago without anyone thinking about this tax at all.
This guide explains how South Australian land tax works for 2026-27, why trusts are treated differently, what the aggregation rules actually do, and the exemptions worth knowing about. It is general information rather than advice, and the figures are for the 2026-27 year; RevenueSA re-indexes them each June.
What land tax is, and when it bites
Land tax is a state tax charged on the total taxable site value of all the land you own in South Australia at midnight on 30 June each year. Site value is the unimproved value of the land as set by the Valuer-General, not what the property would sell for with the house on it. Your home is exempt if you own it personally and live in it, and land used for primary production is generally exempt, so for most people land tax is a tax on investment property, holiday houses, commercial premises and vacant land.
The ownership snapshot at 30 June is what counts. Settle a purchase on 1 July and you pay nothing for that year; settle on 29 June and you pay for the whole year on that parcel. Adelaide buyers who can choose their settlement date should bear that in mind.
The 2026-27 general rates
For land held by individuals, companies and most fixed or nominated trusts, no tax is payable until your aggregated site value passes $936,000. Above that the rate starts at 0.5 per cent and steps up through 1.0 per cent from $1,504,000 and 2.0 per cent from $2,188,000, reaching the top rate of 2.4 per cent on site value above $3,504,000. These thresholds are indexed each year to the Valuer-General’s average site value movement, and they rose by more than 12 per cent for 2026-27 on the back of Adelaide’s property market. The rates themselves have not changed.
A worked example helps. An Adelaide investor holding two rental properties with a combined site value of $1.8 million pays roughly $5,800 for 2026-27. The same investor with $2.8 million of site value pays about $21,900. The scale is steeply progressive, which is why the way land is grouped matters so much.
Why trusts pay more
Land held in a discretionary (family) trust is taxed on a separate, harsher scale. The tax-free threshold for a trust is just $25,000 of site value, a figure that has not been indexed since it was introduced in 2020, and the rate is 0.5 per cent higher than the general scale through the middle bands. A trust with $1.8 million of site value pays about $14,800, two and a half times what an individual pays on the same land. The surcharge disappears only at the top, where both scales meet at 2.4 per cent.
There are ways out of the trust rate, but they are narrower than most people think. A unit trust or fixed trust can nominate all of its unitholders or beneficiaries to RevenueSA, after which the trust is taxed at general rates and each unitholder’s share is instead aggregated with their own land. For discretionary trusts the equivalent designated-beneficiary nomination was a one-off transitional measure for land held at 16 October 2019, and the window closed at the end of 2021. Land bought by a family trust since then is on the trust scale, full stop, and nothing can be done about it short of moving the land out of the trust, which brings stamp duty and capital gains tax of its own.
Some trusts are excluded from the surcharge altogether: self managed super funds and other complying superannuation trusts, charitable trusts, deceased estates during administration, child maintenance trusts and special disability trusts. An SMSF that holds a commercial property, a common structure among our Adelaide business-owner clients, is assessed at the ordinary general rates.
Aggregation: the rule that changed everything in 2020
Before 1 July 2020 it was common for South Australian investors to hold each property in a different entity so that each one sat under the tax-free threshold. The 2020 reforms closed that. Today all land owned by the same person is aggregated into one assessment. Related companies are grouped and assessed as a single owner. Jointly owned land is assessed jointly first, and then each co-owner’s share is added to the rest of their land, with a credit for tax already paid on the joint assessment so the same land is not taxed twice.
Each trust is still assessed separately from its trustee’s own land and from other trusts, which is the one form of separation that survived. But the trust surcharge is the price of that separation, and for most portfolios it costs more than the aggregation it avoids. Running the numbers both ways before you buy is the only way to know.
The exemptions worth checking
The principal place of residence exemption is the big one, and it has limits. The home must be owned by a natural person and occupied as their principal residence. A home held in a family trust or a company is not exempt, a trap we see when a property is bought through a trust for asset protection and the family later moves in. If you run a business from home, the exemption is reduced once business use passes a quarter of the floor area and lost entirely above three quarters.
The primary production exemption covers land of 0.8 hectares or more used wholly or mainly for a primary production business. Outside the defined rural areas around Adelaide and Mount Gambier it applies largely automatically. Inside them, which takes in the Adelaide Hills, the Barossa, McLaren Vale and the Fleurieu, the owner or their family must be substantially full-time engaged in the business, which catches hobby farms and lifestyle blocks. We deal with this regularly for clients in the Hills and it is worth getting right before the first notice arrives rather than arguing afterwards.
Other exemptions and concessions exist for deceased estates, owners who have moved into residential care, uninhabitable dwellings, not-for-profit associations, retirement villages and aged care facilities, and eligible build-to-rent developments, which receive a 50 per cent reduction in site value through to 2039-40. The 2026-27 State Budget made no changes to land tax, and South Australia still has no foreign-owner land tax surcharge, unlike most other states.
Objecting to your site value
Because land tax is driven entirely by the Valuer-General’s site value, the value itself is the first thing to check. You have 60 days from the first notice for the year that shows the new value, which is usually your council rates notice rather than the land tax assessment, to lodge an objection with the Office of the Valuer-General. Miss that window and the value stands for the year. A separate 60-day objection right applies to the RevenueSA assessment itself, for errors in ownership, aggregation or exemption status. Tax stays payable while an objection is considered.
Paying, and planning
Notices issue from October to owners who are liable, and you can pay in full or in four quarterly instalments, with longer payment arrangements available on request. Late payment attracts penalty tax and interest, so put the dates in the diary.
The planning point is simple: land tax is a structure question, decided at purchase. Whether an Adelaide investment property should sit in your own name, your spouse’s name, a unit trust, a family trust or your SMSF depends on income tax, capital gains tax, asset protection, borrowing and estate planning as well as land tax, and the right answer for one client is often wrong for the next. The 2026 federal changes to negative gearing and the CGT discount, and the proposed minimum tax on discretionary trusts from 2028 that we covered in our business structures guide, have only made that decision more important.
If you would like us to model the land tax on your current or planned holdings, our property investment accountants work with investors across Adelaide and regional South Australia. Get in touch before you sign the contract, not after.
This article is general information only and does not take into account your personal circumstances. Thresholds and rates are for the 2026-27 land tax year and are indexed annually; check RevenueSA for current figures and seek advice tailored to your situation before acting.
