Land Tax

Hi there

I am buying a lot at True North Greenvale and I was told that I will be paying land tax on top of the purchase price as the developer has already been charged for this by Vic SRO for the whole of 2020. I do not have a problem with paying land tax on the purchase price of $395,000.00 which comes to $565.00 as per Vic SRO website. The developer's sales person on the other hand is telling me that it will be somewhere around $5,000.00 for the land tax. As far as I know, I should only be paying land tax for the lot that I'm buying and not anything more which the developer has been charged because there's more land within the same estate that the developer still owns.

Can anyone share their experience please? This will be my principal place of residence and I am a first home buyer. I shouldn't be paying land tax at all but since the developer wants to pass this cost on to me, I am happy to pay lad tax for the lot that I'm buying and nothing more.

We are on the same page. We were just told by our conveyancer that we have to pay addtional of $3,093 on top of the remaining 90% of the purchase price that we haven't paid for. This is for the land tax from the date we signed the contract from Dec 2017 up to the date of the settlement which was this month.
This shows that the developer are passing on the land tax expenses to the buyer while the land is still being developed. The cost is proportioned to the size of your land against the total block size.

Thanks for the reply. I was also told by my conveyancer that there's no way around this one and have to pay.

We had the same experience as well. Bought land in North West, paid deposit in November. Was only told about the land tax having to be paid by us towards early December. Tried our best to complete the purchase by mid December, but the Land Owner's solicitor dragged her feet and we are only settling this week. Initially we were told that the land tax would be about 2k, but in the end we had to fork out almost 5k for the land tax.

From what I understand, the cost doesn't relate directly to your land size. The land owner is taxed on the total size of the land owned. The land owner then takes the total tax, and divide/proportionate this with the size of land that you have purchased. Basically the more land the land owner owns, the higher the tax they pay, and in the end the cost is passed on to you as the purchaser of the land. Hard lesson learnt, so if you are considering to buy land towards the end of the year, make sure you settle by end November to save some money.

Yup, I also learnt the hard way. The earlier in the year you settle, the more land tax you pay

Of course, I didn't want to resume this topic, but I didn't want to create a new topic for the sake of my message. In general, maybe I got something wrong, but it seems that taxes have always been and always will be, but if this is not the case, then correct me.