Self assessor induction program

• Important tips to streamline your transactions
• Available resources—toolkits, tutorials, calculators, interactive help
• Understanding your obligations
• Setting up QRO Online

My name is Ben. I’m from Queensland Revenue Office. I’m part of the team that handles all of the urgent ‘settlement today’ issues that arise. Hopefully you’ll get some benefit from this training, which will minimise these issues going forward.

We commenced an induction program for our new self assessors at the start of February this year. We recognise that the vast majority of transfer duty transactions are handled by you, as our self assessors, and we want to ensure that we support you from the outset. This program is conducted via Microsoft Teams and we spend 45 minutes one-on-one with our new self assessors to discuss resources available and important obligations under the notice of registration. The program is tailored towards your frequently asked questions and tips that we think would help you navigate self assessment with greater ease.

Consequently, we want to give our existing self assessors the opportunity to experience the program. We hope there may be a few key tips that you take away from this today. There is an option available for you to ask any questions during this webinar, and I’m going to try and get to as many of those questions as possible during the webinar.

Please note that, as always, we cannot offer legal advice around specific transactions; and anything that is of a more complicated nature, please use the self-assessment email address that I’m sure most of you are already familiar with.

So, as I said, I’ll break at various points to answer any questions that come through the portal. With that I will begin.

So being a registered self assessor provides significant benefits to your business. It will help you expedite transfer processing, which is important for your clients and labour-saving for you. It will allow you to access our support and resources as needed. The purpose of this induction training is to explain the key information around your responsibilities and obligations as a self assessor, and to show you useful tools and links with assessing and lodging. So I’m going to share my screen now.

The first thing I’m going to show you is the agenda. So this is the agenda that we go through with the new self assessors. So we touch on the self assessor guidelines, which we cover off in more detail in the compliance section. We’ll deal with data entry standards, transactions that you can and cannot self assess, toolkits, key dates, interactive help. The bottom 2, which I’ve highlighted in red (QRO Online set up and next steps) are what we do with brand new self assessors. We make sure that you’re linked up correctly to PEXA and vice versa—but we’re not going to cover off on that today.

So I’ll just get rid of that and take you to Google.

The site we’re going to be working on today is the Queensland Revenue Office site, not QRO Online. So to access it, it’s as simple as entering QRO. It takes you to our Queensland Revenue Office landing page, which takes you to all the taxes that we administer. Now, we are—as part of this program—only going to be focusing obviously on self assessors, and we’ll touch on the transfer (stamp) duty page as well.

But we’ll start off in a self assessor page.

So I’ll click into this and this takes you to this page. Now we’re going to go through some of these things today, but I’m going to start off in Essentials.

So within Essentials, there are lots of different options there for you to look at, at a later date, but I am going to start off by going into the ‘Enter data into QRO Online’. This is super important. As established self assessors, you’ll appreciate the importance of this. This site tells you all the basic stuff that you need to know about how to enter data into PEXA and QRO Online to minimise the errors that you may incur.

So I’ll start off by saying that with data entry, the source of truth is with PEXA. So you start all of your transactions in PEXA. You create your workspace in PEXA and when everything is satisfied, you verify duty and this will bring across the correct information into QRO Online.

Now, when entering data into PEXA, this site gives a very good tip right at the top: always enter everything in capitals. If you enter something in capitals in PEXA and then enter something in lower case in QRO, it can generate an E114 error.

So something to bear in mind is always use capitals. Whilst we’re talking about errors, E114 error is when the transferee or share ownership is entered incorrectly amongst other things. And that could be anything from the misspelt name to you’ve entered the share ownership in PEXA as fee simple but it may only be 1/2 share being transferred. That will generate an E114.

An E147 is another common error that will occur, and that is when the trust details are incorrect. Now, if you’re acting for the buyer and you’ve entered the trust details incorrectly—not so much of a problem. If it’s the vendor’s trust details—that becomes a little bit more problematic because you’ll need to contact them and find out exactly what they have put into the trust name box that only they have access to before you’ll be able to get it corrected in QRO.

An E167, when the contracts of sale doesn’t match, is also quite common.

Now what we’re trying to stress to new self assessors is that to minimise these problems, if you keep the transaction in draft for as long as possible—lodgement timeframes permitting—you can always correct these errors yourselves. So, for example, if a client has come to you and said I want to purchase this property as an investment and you’ve assessed it accordingly; and then at the 11th hour they come to you and say they want to move into the property, so they want to claim the home concession, you’ll then have to get it reassessed by us if you’ve lodged it already. Now, if you’ve still got the transaction draft, you’ll be able to make those amendments yourself and without needing to contact us. So, the longer you keep things in draft, you could always go back into PEXA and hit Verify and it will bring across the most current and up-to-date information there is. So, if anyone has made any amendments—the bank, the vendor or solicitor—you can bring all the correct information back across.

Now a very common message that we’ll come across is a W107. Now the W means it’s a warning. Warnings are not as critical as errors. So the vendor may have gone into the PEXA workspace and added or changed the date of birth for the vendors or for the transferors, or changed their address. Because they are not mandatory points, it doesn’t create an error. It creates a warning and you’ll get a W107. Please don’t think that you cannot settle if you get a W107, you can still continue. So something to consider: E is an error, and that’s a problem. W is a warning—not so much of a problem. If, however, you have submitted a transaction and these errors occur and it’s already lodged, you’ll need to contact us, so you’ll email us at selfassessment@treasury.qld.gov.au. Please provide all the necessary evidence we need to make the change. So, if it was the example I’ve just given and the client wants to now claim a concession, please provide a signed and witnessed D2.1. If it’s a change to a name, provide the Form 1. If it’s something to do with the contract, please provide the contract of sale. That way, it minimises the to’ing and fro’ing between us to get the amendment done, especially if it’s time critical.

So going through this data entry into QRO Online, as I said, it gives you all the basic ways to enter names correctly: personal representatives, trustees or trading entities, companies and addresses. But the main highlight I would take from this is enter things in capitals. Now if you come across a foreign, if you have to do a transfer for a foreign company that doesn’t have an ABN or an ACN, it’s outside the scope of econveyancing. Equally, if you have a client that only has one name—so no first name or surname—you won’t be able to do it through PEXA. It will have to be a paper settlement.

So next I am going to take you out of this and into ‘Transactions that you must self assess’. So, this list tells you all the transactions as a self assessor you must self assess. It starts off with the land transactions, residential and non-residential, AFAD and on to the likes of option agreements, transfers by directions, aggregations (certain aggregations, should I say). It then goes on to say what concessions must be self assessed and also a list of exemptions. All these are things that must be self assessed.

Below that is a list of transactions that cannot be self assessed. Now, this list of transactions that cannot be self assessed is not exhaustive. So, for example, it doesn’t say on this list that you cannot do charitable institution transactions, but they can’t be self assessed. So the rule of thumb that we try to get across to self assessors is that if it doesn’t say that you can, assume that you can’t. That way you won’t fall foul of assessing something that you shouldn’t be assessing.

So I’m now going to take you to the toolkits. The toolkits are really good for new self assessors. These toolkits will guide you through exactly how to enter everything into QRO Online to successfully launch a transaction. As you can see, there are several toolkits to assist you on the way. This is also a good clue as to whether you can or cannot self assess it—because if there is no toolkit, that means you cannot self assess it.

So I’m going to take you into the electronic convencing and I’m going to go to relevant transfer agreement. So this is, this will step you through how to lodge a relevant transfer agreement and it literally starts from step 1, which is ‘start the transaction in the ELN workspace’ (PEXA). Step 2 adds the required information, all the way through to your payment methods. And then to step 5 where it asks you to log into QRO Online and then it will step you through every single stage you’ll need to fill in QRO Online to complete it. I’m not going to go through every single part of this, but it is thorough to the point where you get to section 29 and it will say ‘submit when all the data is accurate’.

So the toolkits will assist you, certainly in the early days of your self assessing.

And whilst in this I’m going to flick to key dates.

So key dates in econveyancing are really, really important. The understanding of key dates is vital. So the main things to take from this is that we’ll deal with relevant transfer agreements and ELN lodgements. Relevant transfer agreements are anything that’s got a contract: anything that’s got, any land transactions that have got a contract—your standard house and land; some business, some business transactions if they involve real property can be relevant transfer agreements—but predominantly it’ll be your house and land dealings.

ELN lodgements will be anything that involves just a transfer—so no contracts involved in it.

Now a relevant transfer agreement must be lodged within 60 days of the transaction or document date (contract date) or 30 days of the unconditional date, whichever is later. So, if you’ve got a contract that’s signed on the 1st of March and it goes unconditional on the 1st of September, we’ve got 60 days to lodge it from the 1st of March or 30 days from the 1st of September. Now it’s whichever is more favourable to your client, which I would suggest in most cases be the latter. Because the actual lodgement date is the date that you submit the transaction in QRO Online.

[Excuse me.] So if you lodge it on the 1st of March, it then moves on to this stage: the payment due date. You must pay within 14 days of the actual lodgement date. And on day 15, unpaid tax interest starts being applied. So if you had an option of lodging it on the 1st of March or the 1st of September within 30 days, I would suggest your clients would probably rather you did it on the 1st of September because that is when payment is going to be due 14 days after that. As I said, unpaid tax interest will start on day 15.

Moving down here, I’ll just show you the examples where it spells out lodging things on time. So we’ve got here the 1st of March for the document date. Lodgement is due 60 days after that date, which is the 30th of April. It was lodged on that date, which means payment is due on the 14th of May and your unpaid tax interest is the 15th of May.

Compare that to agreements lodged up to 14 days late and you’ll see how the figures change slightly. So the same dates: the document date, lodgement is due on the 30th of April. It’s actually lodged on the 10th of May. That means the unpaid tax interest is still the 15th of May, which is 14 days after that, plus one day. However, the payment due date is the 24th of May because that is still always 14 days after the actual lodgement date, which was the 10th of May. But what you need to figure, what you need to figure in, when you’re paying is the unpaid tax interest would have been accruing since the 15th of May, so there will be 9 days of unpaid tax interest to figure out when you’re making this payment at settlement.

And the examples go on: you could have lodging more than 14 days late; lodging before the due date. All the examples are here in this part of the website.

Now I have a graphic that I will show you here, and this is available upon request if you’d like a copy of this. It explains the implications of lodgement and payment timeframes. This is when everything’s lodged on time; moves on to an early lodgement where it will show you the implications and when the late payment interest will apply; and then a late lodgement. Again, the blue arrows will show the implications of when payment is due and late payment that is applied. So if you’d like a copy of this, please reach out to selfassessment@treasury.qld.gov.au.

So we have received some questions, so I’ll break for a couple of questions. I’ve got Rafferty from Ipswich, who asks ‘How do I edit the transaction in QRO Online once PEXA has generated the transaction number?’ So, once you’ve entered the duty information into PEXA, you’ll receive a transaction ID that will populate. This is your QRO Online transaction number. You log into QRO Online, go to your dashboard, and then click on Lodgements, which is down the left-hand side, where you’ll see the transaction number. The very end section is a heading called Actions, and there’s a button under that that says Lodge. You have to click on this in order to then edit the transaction, which will have prefilled information dragged across from PEXA. Just remember that pressing Lodge will not automatically lodge the transaction. You’re unable to submit that transaction until you’ve successfully completed it and reviewed it and then you’ll hit Submit and that will finally lodge it. So hopefully that clears that up. Thank you for the question.

Zachary from Stevenage asks: ‘Can I pay directly from PEXA?’ Unfortunately not, Zachary. The Duties Act states that funds must be received by a self assessor. If transfer duty funds are committed to be paid as part of the PEXA settlement, you must enter your trust account details into PEXA and then pay Queensland Revenue Office. Paying directly via PEXA contravenes your self assessment obligations. Alternatively, you can hold funds in your trust account or pay us directly prior to settlement. So thank you for that question, Zachary.

Next, I’ve got no more questions at this stage so I will go back to sharing this. And I’m going to take you to the interactive help.

So, we’ll just come back out with this page. So that’s the toolkits. We’re going to go to the interactive help, which is below this. I really like this because if you can see the screen, you’ll see that it covers some of the more complicated matters that you may come across.

I’m going to, as an example, show you the aggregation interactive help. Now, as many of you will have done aggregations, you know they can be very complex and they can be very tricky. Now if you contact us or if you ring up the contact centre or email us asking whether something should be aggregated, we cannot give legal advice as you know. So we are not going to be able to give you a yes or no answer.

So, go to the interactive help and it will give you an answer. So, it’s as simple as this. It’s got a few questions and you just have to answer them and see where it takes you to. So:

• How many dutiful transactions are currently being assessed?
  We’ll say for this example ‘more than one’.
• How were the properties purchased?
  We’ll say ‘by agreement or transfer’.
• Did the purchasers execute the agreements—or transfers, if there are no agreements—on the same day?
  We’ll say ‘yes’.
• Were the offers for all the properties made at the same time?
  We’ll say ‘some were’.

And there you go. Answer: aggregate. ‘Based on the information you provided, section 30 will apply to transactions that had offers made at the same time.’

This is a really great tool and something that, in terms of aggregation, if your client is saying ‘no, we don’t think it should be aggregated’; and you, as a self assessor, believe it should be—take them to this. Go through this with them. It will give you your answer. And it doesn’t matter how complicated the scenario may be. I’m just going to randomly press buttons to see where it takes me, but it will eventually give you an answer. Because, as I said at the start, aggregation can be really complicated. So it won’t be as simple as the example I just gave. But you can print this off, attach it to your file and it’s the answer.

So toolkit, sorry, interactive help as I said, marvellous tools for anything there that you see on the screen.

So I’m going to flick across now, for, to transfer duty, which was the other page that I said I’d be working in—just to show you where our concessions and exemptions live. So concessions are all in here and it breaks them down: home concession, first home, disposal and its effects, first home vacant land, how to get a reassessment for home concessions…and the same for exemptions.

And it breaks down all the exemptions into different categories. I’m not going to go into these in any great depth. I just want you to know where to look to find them should you need them. They’re not in the self-assessment page. They are in the transfer duty page.

So next I am going to move on to the calculator. So the calculator, just search it up here. And tools and calculators. Transfer duty calculator.

So as established self assessors, you’ll be familiar with this; but new self assessors, I very much advise you save this to your favourites as you’ll be using this a lot. First thing I’m going to highlight on this page is this question here. Not a lot of people notice this, but ‘Is this a relevant transfer agreement?’ As you can see, it always defaults to ‘No’. So when calculating duty, if it is a relevant transfer agreement, be sure to change that to ‘Yes’, because it will give you those extra 30 days before it starts calculating unpaid tax interest.

So, we’ll use a very simple calculation. We’ll use the 1st of March 2025. Lodged at QRO—we’re not going to put an unconditional date—lodged at QRO 30th of March 2025. And then we’ll go down to this part. So, the value of your property always goes in there. We’ll go 750,000. And when you’re putting in, whether it needs a concession, no concession, this always has to equal 1—so it always has to be a whole amount. So if you put in half and half, you can do that. For the purpose of this, I’m going to say ‘No concession claimed’. So I’m going to hit Calculate and it shows you the transfer duty of 26,775.

So going back to the example I used at the start, your clients have now come to you and said ‘No, we want the home concession applying. How much transfer duty are we going to have to pay?’, it’s as simple as removing the one from there, inserting it into there and recalculate. And then it will give you 19,600, which is with a concessional rate applied.

So the calculator is something you’ll get used to very quickly; but, yes, save it to your favourites would be my advice.

OK, we’ve got a few more questions that I will go to now. So, I’ve got Felicity from Toowoomba asks: ‘What is the difference between stamping and endorsing?’. Okay so stamping is the act of putting a stamp on an instrument. You endorse by inserting your client number, transaction number, duty paid, UTI and penalty tax if imposed. Endorsement is completed when the stamp is dated and signed. So when settling via ELN, you’re endorsing the transfer document electronically. Just remember, please, that you must not endorse an instrument unless you hold the full duty about or QRO Online indicates that Queensland Revenue Office has received the funds. So thank you for that, Felicity.

Karen from Capalaba asks: ‘Does the unconditional date have any relevance or change the date of lodgement?’ So a transaction statement is required to be lodged within 30 days of the date of the liability of the duty arising. If you’ve got a relevant transfer agreement that has a contract with land, you’ve got to lodge the transaction in QRO Online by the later of 60 days from the contract date or 30 days from the unconditional date. So, it’s important to remember that the benefit of this extension of time is negated if you submitted early, either before the due date for lodgement or before the end of an extension period, or before a contract becomes unconditional. In these circumstances, payment is still due within 14 days of the actual lodgement date, as I touched on earlier. So that’s all in key dates. You’ll find more information about that. Karen, thank you for the question.

I’m now going to go to the guidelines. So, the guidelines are the guidelines that cover everything you must do as a transfer duty self assessor, the SA1 to 5. I’m going to focus, for the purposes of this training, on the SA4, which is guidelines for imposing penalty amounts on self assessors. This is basically what happens if you break the rules that you’re governed by. So the main 3 things we will focus on are:

1. If you do not pay transfer, if, sorry, if a transaction is not lodged within 30 days from the date on which the liability arises, it’s a breach of sections 455 and 455(a) of the Duties Act.
2. The next main one is: if you do not pay transfer duty by 14 days from the lodgement whilst holding the duty, it contravenes section 35B of the Tax Administration Act.
3. And the one that seems to fall foul, self assessors fall foul of more than any, is: if you endorse an instrument without having received the duty to your trust account or without it being paid to the Commissioner, it’s a contravention of section 480 and 480A of the Duties Act. And this is essentially, this last one is essentially, if you’re endorsing a document as having been paid without us being paid or without the funds being cleared with us.

With contraventions we deal with them, first time, we deal with them as an education, so we’ll contact you. We’ll find out why it happened, what happened, how we can prevent it from happening again. Should you continually contravene the Act, it will move on to penalty stages and then it can be a show cause to suspend you or cancel your self assessment registration in Queensland. So, the more, the more serious it gets, the more serious the repercussions are. But hopefully you won’t fall foul of that.And the last thing I will show you in here is the self assessors news hub. So the self assessors news hub is where everything relating to self assessor news is housed. So if we’re doing webinars, it will be in there. Any news, all in here. If we’re closing down for periods over the Christmas and New year time, it will tell you, update you on things like that—but anything self assessor related is in here.

And that is it.

We would now—as I said at the start, we’re not going to do this—but now I would unshare my screen and I’ll get the new self assessors to share their screen and we make sure that the QRO Online is all set up so that the PEXA subscriber ID is in there and PEXA and QRO are all linked up so everyone’s all good to go.

We’ve got a final couple of questions that I can squeeze in here. So I’ve got Donna from Underwood asks: ‘If UTI is accruing daily, how will I know how much to pay on a given date?’ So, for a lodged transaction, you check your Payments tab in the dashboard in QRO Online. I think it’s two or three down on the left-hand side and that will give you up-to-date payment amount prior to settling. If it’s in draft, use the transfer duty calculator to calculate any UTI for your scenario. So the calculator I showed you earlier will give you that answer. Thank you for that.

And Joel from Raceview asks: ‘If I have an off-the-plan sale and they sign a contract today but will become unconditional in 6 months, will LPI or UTI accrue?’ So using the previous example, you must lodge the transaction in QRO Online 30 days after the unconditional date. Again, if it’s a lot earlier or before the unconditional date, payment is still due within 14 days.

Final question is, I’ve got Tracy from Heidelberg asks: ‘Is the document date the same date as lodgement date?’ So, in most cases the document date will be the date of the contract. The lodgement date is the date you actually submit the transaction in QRO Online.

All right. Well, we don’t have any more questions. So, thank you for joining us. I hope you got something from this and hopefully see you again next time.