Transfer duty

Transfer duty is the official current name for stamp duty in several Australian states (NSW renamed it in 2016, QLD uses 'transfer duty' formally, VIC still calls it 'land transfer duty'). The mechanics are identical: a state-government tax on the dutiable transaction of transferring a property title, calculated on a sliding scale based on purchase price. The renaming was largely cosmetic - the word 'stamp' became misleading once the duty stopped being physically stamped onto documents in the 1990s. Treat 'stamp duty' and 'transfer duty' as the same thing for budgeting and tax-cost-base purposes.