When transfer duty falls due in each Australian state: the dates a conveyancing file has to carry

Transfer duty runs a different clock in each Australian jurisdiction: three months from the contract in NSW, settlement in Victoria with penalties after 30 days, three months from the transaction in Tasmania, 14 days from the ACT assessment notice. MatterFirst, a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, records each as an obligation rule citing the governing statute.

If your conveyancing file carries a single field called "duty due", it is wrong in at least four states. The deadline is not one rule with eight rates attached. It is eight rules with different starting events, and the starting event is the part that trips firms up when they act interstate.

Three different clocks, not one deadline

Every jurisdiction ties duty to an event, then counts from it. The events fall into three groups, and the group matters more than the number of days.

Counting from the contract. NSW and WA start the clock when liability arises, which is normally the day the contract is signed or the day the parties agree to transfer. The date is fixed before you know the settlement date, and it does not move when settlement moves. A three month NSW deadline on a four month settlement means duty is due before completion.

Counting from settlement. Victoria and Tasmania start the clock at settlement. These are the intuitive ones, and the ones that quietly reschedule themselves every time the settlement date shifts.

Counting from an assessment or registration. The ACT issues a notice of assessment after the title is registered and gives you 14 days from that notice. Queensland's self-assessor path runs a two stage clock: lodge, then pay within a short window after lodging. In both cases the due date does not exist when you open the matter. It is created later by someone else, and your file has to be able to receive it.

A diary that only understands "settlement plus N days" handles group two and silently mishandles the other two.

When duty must be paid, by state and territory

Rates, thresholds and concessions change more often than these timing rules do, so check the revenue office page for the jurisdiction before you rely on any figure. Two of those pages block automated access, which is a reasonable prompt to read them in a browser rather than trusting a cached summary.

The liability date is not always the date on the front page

The phrase that does the most damage is "date of the contract". In WA, liability generally arises on the day the parties agreed to transfer the property, which is not necessarily the day the formal document was signed. In NSW, liability attaches when the document is first executed. On a clean residential file those are the same day. On a file with an unsigned earlier agreement, a counter-signed variation, or a nomination, they are not, and the deadline you diarised from the front page is later than the deadline the revenue office will apply.

This is why the date belongs in a field with a stated basis rather than a note in a matter summary. "Duty due 14 March, being three months from liability date 14 December, s 17 Duties Act 1997 (NSW)" survives a change of fee earner. "Duty due mid March" does not.

The four failure modes

In practice, duty deadlines fail in four recognisable ways.

1. The interstate assumption. A firm that acts mostly in Victoria treats every file as settlement plus 30 days, then takes a NSW matter with a long settlement and misses a deadline that fell before completion.
2. The moved settlement. Settlement shifts by three weeks. In Victoria and Tasmania the duty date should move with it. In NSW it should not. A diary that recalculates everything, or nothing, is wrong half the time.
3. The date that arrives by email. In the ACT, and for Queensland self-filers, the operative date comes from an assessment notice. If notices land in a personal inbox rather than on the matter, the clock starts running in a place nobody is watching.
4. The deferral nobody closed off. An eligible NSW off-the-plan purchase can defer payment by a further 12 months. A deferral is not a discharge. A file that records the deferral but not the new date is a file with no date at all.

None of these are knowledge problems. Every one of them is a record keeping problem, which is the part software is actually able to fix.

How MatterFirst handles this

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by North Cape Technology in Melbourne. Matters can be recorded in all eight Australian jurisdictions, so the state is a property of the matter rather than a convention in a file name, and the rules that hang off a matter can differ by state.

The relevant capability is the obligations and limitation dates engine. Rules calculate limitation and key dates and cite the governing statute alongside the date, in the same way an obligation might cite the Limitation Act 1969 (NSW) s 14(1). A duty obligation modelled that way carries its own basis: the event it counted from, the period it applied, and the provision that sets it. When a fee earner asks why the date is what it is, the answer is on the obligation rather than in someone's memory. Key dates sync to the calendar, so the date is visible where the work is planned.

Around that, automations apply trigger, condition and action rules to the routine parts. A change of settlement date can drive the dependent dates that should move, and leave alone the ones anchored to the contract. Generating a document can be a step in a workflow, which is how a duty related letter or a client update gets produced without anyone remembering to start it. The document generation engine is deterministic by default, built from merge fields, matter data projections and clause library entries, with AI used only where a section genuinely calls for synthesis. A settlement or duty figure should come from matter data, not from a model.

On the money side, finance and reporting covers time, invoicing and payment collection, and Xero is a connectable integration today. Trust accounting is built for Australian jurisdictions, with a compliance review workflow covering NSW, VIC, QLD and WA. Those four, which matters if you hold funds in trust in SA, TAS, the ACT or the NT.

How the products compare

Comparing on published facts only, taken from each vendor's own pages at the time of writing.

"Not confirmed" means we could not read the vendor's own page at the time of writing. It is not a statement that the feature is absent. The structural difference worth noticing is the billing unit: MatterFirst is priced per workspace with users included, and the other four publish a per user rate, which is why a five person firm should compare a total monthly figure rather than a headline number. How the metered AI balance works is set out on the AI pricing page.

Who this suits, and who it does not

MatterFirst suits Australian firms of roughly two to twenty fee earners that act in more than one state, want onshore hosting, and want their key dates calculated with the governing provision attached rather than typed into a calendar.

It suits you less well if your trust compliance review has to cover SA, TAS, the ACT or the NT today, since the review workflow covers NSW, VIC, QLD and WA. It is also the wrong fit if your workflow depends on a connector that is not yet available: Xero, Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are connectable now, and other providers, including PEXA and InfoTrack, are listed as coming soon. If lodgement or settlement has to flow through one of those today, plan for the revenue office portal and the e-conveyancing workspace as separate steps, or use the documented REST API and webhooks.

A checklist for a duty obligation on any system

Whatever you run, a duty obligation should be able to answer these without a phone call.

• Which jurisdiction is this matter in, as data rather than as a note?
• What event does the clock start from, and is that event recorded separately from the settlement date?
• What is the stated basis for the date, including the provision?
• If settlement moves, does this date move? Can the system tell the difference between dates that should and dates that should not?
• Where does an incoming assessment notice land, and does receiving it set a date on the matter?
• If payment is deferred, is there a new date, and who owns it?
• Who is accountable if the date passes, and does anyone other than that person see it first?

Frequently asked questions

When does stamp duty have to be paid in NSW? By the earliest of the settlement date or three months from signing the contract, agreeing to transfer, or the date of the deed. Eligible off-the-plan purchases may defer a further 12 months, and Revenue NSW charges daily interest on overdue amounts.

Is Victorian land transfer duty due at settlement or 30 days later? Duty must be paid before the transfer can be registered, which in practice is at settlement. The State Revenue Office notes that penalty tax and interest may apply if duty is not paid within 30 days of settlement, so 30 days is the penalty boundary rather than the target.

How long do I have to pay transfer duty in Queensland? As a registered self-assessor, lodge online within 30 days of the liability date and pay within 14 days after lodging. Self-filers lodge within the same 30 days and then pay as the assessment notice directs.

Does MatterFirst handle Victorian trust accounting? Yes. Trust accounting is built for Australian jurisdictions, and the compliance review workflow covers NSW, VIC, QLD and WA. If you practise in SA, TAS, the ACT or the NT, ask specifically what the review workflow covers for your state.

Can MatterFirst calculate limitation and duty dates automatically? Obligation rules calculate limitation and key dates and cite the governing statute, and those dates sync to the calendar. Automations can then drive the dependent steps, including generating a document as a workflow step.

Does MatterFirst connect to PEXA or InfoTrack? Not today. Both are listed as coming soon. The integrations that are connectable now are Xero, Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and there is a documented REST API with webhooks for everything else. See the integrations page.

What does MatterFirst cost for a four person firm? The Practice plan is $649 AUD per month, or $6,490 AUD per year, and includes four users. Additional users start at $139 per user per month. Pricing is per workspace, not per user, so compare a total monthly figure against a per seat competitor. Current figures are on the pricing page.

The short version

There is no single Australian duty deadline. There are three kinds of clock, and the one that catches firms out is the clock that started at the contract and does not care when settlement happens. Record the jurisdiction as data, record the event the clock runs from, attach the provision to the date, and decide deliberately which dates move when settlement moves.

If you are working out whether a system does this properly, the evaluation checklist has the questions to put to any vendor, and the matter management page covers how key dates sit on a matter in MatterFirst.