The Victorian Government introduced the COVID Debt Repayment Plan in the 2023–24 State Budget. The plan includes temporary changes to land tax and payroll tax until 30 June 2033.
Payroll tax
From 1 July 2023, a temporary payroll tax surcharge applies to wages paid in Victoria by businesses liable for Victorian payroll tax with national payrolls over $10 million a year.
A rate of 0.5% applies for businesses with national payrolls above $10 million, and businesses with national payrolls above $100 million will pay an additional 0.5%.
In 2023–24:
- we collected $9.6 billion in payroll tax revenue
- an additional $1.1 billion in payroll tax through the COVID Debt Repayment Plan
- $46 million of payroll tax revenue was assessed through front-end compliance activities
- 97% of refunds were completed with 30 days.
Land tax
From the 2024 land tax year, if you own taxable land valued:
- $50,000 to <$100,000 – a $500 surcharge will apply.
- $100,000 to <$300,000 (or <$250,000 for trusts) – a $975 surcharge will apply.
- ≥$300,000 (or ≥$250,000 for trusts) — a $975 surcharge will apply, plus a 0.1% increase to the rate of land tax.
The reduction of the land tax threshold from $300,000 to $50,000 meant more than 328,000 new customers were liable for land tax, bringing the total number of assessments issued to more than 860,000.
Despite this large increase, we issued 98.8% of assessments on time (up from 95.1% in 2023).
This year, we leveraged technology to make it easy for customers to pay the right amount at the right time:
- More than 545,000 customers are registered for My Land Tax, an online portal that allows you to manage land tax information quickly and easily.
- Customers set up 92,440 AutoPay arrangements, helping them pay by instalments.
- There were 5.6 million land tax webpage views.
- We launched a chatbot to help resolve customers’ queries online. There were 12,160 chatbot sessions and 2,830 live chat sessions with an agent.
Our customer services team answered more than 221,000 calls about land tax in 2023–24.
In 2023–24, we collected $5.9 billion in land tax revenue, and an additional $1.2 billion in land tax through the COVID Debt Repayment Plan.