Queensland will not punish you for six months in India and New South Wales will

How long can a permanent resident spend in India before an Australian state government decides they are foreign? In Queensland the question barely arises. In New South Wales it does, and the line falls well short of six months.

The difference sits inside the Queensland land tax rules on absentees, a page most households never open until an assessment arrives in the letterbox. One state reads the visa. The other counts the days. For a family in Sunnybank or Runcorn holding a mortgage here and a parent in India who needs looking after, that distinction is worth real money.

What Queensland land tax says about an absentee

The Queensland Revenue Office defines an absentee as a foreign individual, including a New Zealand citizen, who does not hold a permanent visa and does not usually live in Australia. Its guidance puts the point that matters most to a migrant household in a single sentence: “Australian citizens and permanent visa holders are not deemed absentees.” The definition has three limbs and all three have to be satisfied before the label attaches, namely that you are a foreign individual, including a New Zealand citizen, that you do not hold a permanent visa, and that you do not usually live in Australia. For an Australian citizen the first limb never closes, and for a permanent visa holder the second never closes.

The Queensland Revenue Office is the agency that assesses and collects Queensland land tax, administers the absentee surcharge and issues the annual assessment notices that landowners receive. It publishes the absentee definition, the threshold and the rate on its own site rather than leaving any of it to interpretation, and it is the body a landowner deals with when a status is queried or when circumstances change. The page carrying the absentee definition was last updated on 23 December 2024. For a household weighing a long trip home, that page is the primary document, ahead of any forum thread or second hand summary passed around a WhatsApp group.

The 3 per cent surcharge and the $350,000 threshold

For a landowner who does fall inside the definition, Queensland land tax sets the absentee threshold at $350,000 of total taxable land value. The surcharge is 3 per cent, worked out by taking the taxable value, subtracting $350,000 and multiplying what is left by 3 per cent. It sits on top of ordinary land tax rather than replacing it.

As a plain illustration, and not a figure taken from any Brisbane suburb, land with a taxable value of $750,000 in absentee hands produces a Queensland land tax surcharge calculated on $400,000. At 3 per cent that is $12,000 for the year, in addition to whatever ordinary land tax is assessed on the same holding.

New South Wales counts days and the number is 165

Revenue NSW applies a different test to the same person. It treats a permanent resident as a foreign person unless that resident has lived in Australia for 200 days or more in a calendar year. It states that a permanent resident who lives overseas for 165 days or more in a calendar year, or 166 days in a leap year, is a foreign person. Surcharge land tax in New South Wales is 5 per cent of land value from the 2025 tax year, and the agency’s page is explicit on the point that softens the blow in Queensland: “A tax-free threshold does not apply to surcharge land tax.”

Run the same illustration through the New South Wales rule. Land valued at $750,000, held by someone who has crossed into foreign person status, attracts 5 per cent of the whole $750,000, which is $37,500 for the year. Nothing is subtracted first, because there is nothing to subtract.

Set the two side by side and the shape of the gap is obvious. Queensland land tax gives an absentee a $350,000 buffer and then charges 3 per cent on the excess. New South Wales gives a foreign person no buffer and charges 5 per cent on the lot. On the same land value, the New South Wales bill in this illustration runs to more than three times the Queensland one, before ordinary land tax in either state is counted.

Who is actually exposed in Queensland

This is where the reporting has to be precise, because the comfort Queensland offers is not universal. Australian citizens and permanent visa holders are named out of the absentee definition, so a permanent resident in Brisbane who spends half a year in Hyderabad does not become an absentee through the length of that trip. Queensland land tax exposure runs to people on temporary visas, because the definition turns on both not holding a permanent visa and not usually living in Australia.

Even then, both limbs still apply. A temporary visa holder who usually lives in Australia does not become an absentee simply by owning land here. How that is judged is set out on the same page. For someone who is not an Australian citizen or permanent visa holder, the Queensland Revenue Office says they will be an absentee if they cannot satisfy the Commissioner that they ordinarily reside in Australia and either they were away from Australia at 30 June or they “have been away from Australia for more than 6 months in total during the financial year before 30 June”. A student, 482 or 485 holder who spends more than six months in India can therefore land inside the definition on the same trip that leaves a permanent resident untouched. Students, 482 holders and families who bought property while living mostly outside the country sit closer to that line than any permanent resident does, and the distance between those two groups is the single most useful thing on the whole page.

The settings belong to a minister

David Janetzki is Queensland’s Treasurer, and he also serves as Minister for Energy and Minister for Home Ownership. Queensland land tax rates, thresholds and surcharges are set by the state government and administered through the Queensland Revenue Office, which puts the absentee threshold and the 3 per cent rate in the category of policy settings rather than permanent features of the law. Holding Treasury and Home Ownership together places the state’s property tax levers and its housing ambitions on the same desk. Whether the current absentee settings survive a future Queensland budget is a live question for any household whose plans depend on them, and one worth watching in the papers released on budget day.

Talk to someone who can read your own file

Made in India Magazine is not a tax adviser, and nothing here is advice about any reader’s own affairs. A household that owns land in Queensland or New South Wales and expects a long stay in India can put the question to a registered tax agent or a property lawyer about their own circumstances, with their assessment notices, ownership structure and visa status in front of them. Land tax turns on details a general article cannot see, including who holds the title, what else is owned and in which state.

The federation is the real story here. One national immigration system issues the visa. Separate state revenue offices then decide, each in their own words, what that visa is worth. Queensland land tax reads the permanent visa and stops. New South Wales opens a calendar and starts counting. The same family, the same flight to sit beside the same ailing parent, and two states arrive at opposite answers.

Both rules do exactly what their drafters intended, which makes the result harder to argue with and no easier to live with. The cost falls on households who have no reason to suspect that a border crossed years ago still decides how a trip home is taxed, and who tend to find out only when the notice lands.