Beware delays as Revenue NSW changes its duties assessment procedures for sale of land of $20 million or more

Revenue NSW is transitioning its assessment procedures for transactions involving all agreements for the sale of land with a dutiable value of $20 million or more. In future, these must be lodged via the eDuties portal instead of through the Electronic Duties Return (EDR) portal.

The EDR portal allows legal practitioners to assess a range of duties transactions and pay duty electronically. When transactions are no longer supported by the EDR portal, they must be lodged via the eDuties portal where the assessment is completed by Revenue NSW. In our experience, assessments completed by Revenue NSW will take some time.

Revenue NSW has advised that exemptions and concessions will not be affected by this change.

How this affects your transactions in land

All contracts for sale of land with a purchase price of $20 million or more must take into account the additional assessment time required for matters lodged via the eDuties portal.

This will impact transactions where the parties are seeking short timeframes between exchange and settlement. Consistent with the approach currently being taken, Revenue NSW will not accept letters requesting urgent duty assessment for a settlement date.

Parties should be aware of these procedural requirements when drafting contracts for sale and negotiating settlement dates, which should be drafted in a way that sets the settlement date for an agreed period after duty assessment has been completed by Revenue NSW.

We expect more procedural details from Revenue NSW soon, and we’ll keep you up to date on them.

If you want to understand more how these changes will affect your acquisition or disposal program, please contact us.