People buying, selling or transferring property must provide tax information using a ‘land transfer tax statement’. The information is collected by LINZ on behalf of IR who use it to make sure property tax obligations are met.
Tax statements are required when most land is transferred
Tax statements are required when most land is transferred. A separate statement is required from every seller (transferor) and buyer (transferee).
There are some exceptions including the transfer of Māori land.
Full list of estates that do and don’t require a land transfer tax statement
Completing a land transfer tax statement
When completing the statement, you must provide information about whether:
- the land being transferred has a home on it
- if the land has a home on it, the transfer is a "main home transfer"
- you or a member of your immediate family is a New Zealand citizen, or holds a Permanent Resident, working or Student Visa
- the transfer is non-notifiable. The non-notifiable reasons are prescribed in regulations. Following amendments to the Land Transfer Act 2017 on 1 January 2020, you can no longer claim the "main home" non-notifiable reason. Unless the transfer is non-notifiable, you must provide an IRD number and information about whether you are a tax resident in another country.
Property tax exemptions and non-notifiable reasons
Download the Land Transfer Tax Statement from the bottom of the page (the notes section will help you complete the statement)
The land transfer tax statements: common scenarios may also help.
e-dealing transactions don’t require tax statements to be sent to us
For e-dealing transactions, we don’t require tax statements to be submitted to us. Instead, your lawyer will enter the information from your completed tax statement into Landonline. The statements themselves should be held by your lawyer or conveyancer for 10 years. The tax statement should not be provided to LINZ as part of an e-dealing compliance review.
Manual dealings
For manual dealings, tax statements must be submitted to us with the transfer documents and LINZ will enter the information into Landonline. Once we’ve registered the transfer we’ll send these documents back to the person who lodged the dealing to retain.
End of transitional period
The transitional period for Land Transfer Tax Statements ended on 1 July 2020. This means that you cannot claim the main home non-notifiable reason at question 15 for any transfer that is lodged on or after 2 July 2020.
If you have a transfer that has not yet been lodged and the tax statements include:
- An answer of “n/a – transitional period applies” at question 3B; or
- The main home non-notifiable reason at question 15;
then you will need to sign a new tax statement without that information to be able to lodge the transfer on or after 2 July 2020 and avoid rejection of the dealing.
If your dealing is lodged on or before 1 July 2020 with tax statements including the above information and your dealing is subsequently:
- rejected, you will need to sign new tax statements with the correct information before the dealing can be re-lodged on or after 2 July 2020; or
- requisitioned, and the transfer remains signed, you will not need to alter the tax information before the dealing can be re-lodged. However, if the transfer is altered and needs to re-signed, then your lawyer will need to contact LINZ customer support before re-lodging the transfer, if you wish to retain those above options.