The Long Service Levy: What Every Australian Builder Pays, State by State

On a Monday in March, a Gold Coast builder has two near-identical medical fit-outs starting within a fortnight of each other. One is in Coolangatta. The other is four hundred metres away, across the border in Tweed Heads.

The estimator priced both from the same template. The Queensland job is fine. The NSW job has a crane booked for Wednesday and a certifier who will not release the construction certificate, because the long service levy has not been paid and nobody had it on the program. It is a small number. It has stopped the whole start.

What is the long service levy?

The long service levy is the charge that funds portable long service leave for construction workers. Because most construction workers move between employers too often to build up long service leave with any one of them, each state and territory runs an industry scheme that tracks service across employers and pays the entitlement from a central fund.

Every jurisdiction funds its scheme differently, and that is the part that catches builders out. There are two models, not one.

Project levy. NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory charge a percentage of the cost of the building work itself, paid once, before work starts.[1][2][3]

Wage-based contribution. Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT charge registered employers a percentage of their workers’ pay, lodged through regular returns for as long as those workers are employed.[4][5][6][7][8]

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Only NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory levy the project. The other five schemes charge employers a percentage of wages.

State and territory scheme websites, September 2026

How much is the long service levy in each state?

These are the current rates, as published by each scheme and checked in September 2026. Rates are reviewed regularly, and Western Australia sets its rate by calendar year rather than financial year, so confirm with the scheme before you lock in a tender.

If you want to run the numbers for a specific job, the Plexa long service levy calculator shows the result for all eight jurisdictions from a single project cost, including which schemes charge nothing on the project because they are funded through wages.

Who pays the long service levy, and when?

For the three project-levy states, the legal liability usually sits with the owner or the applicant for the approval, not the builder. In NSW it is the applicant for the building approval or the person the work is being done for.[1] In Queensland it is the applicant for the development permit or the person for whom the work is done, and in the Northern Territory it is the person for whom the work is done, with different rules for government work in both.[2][3]

Commercially, it lands wherever the contract puts it. On many commercial jobs the builder carries it inside “statutory fees and charges”, which is how it goes missing from an estimate copied from another state.

The timing is not negotiable in any of the three.

“Building work can only start after the levy is paid.”

NSW Government, Long Service Levy (Building and Construction Industry)[1]

NT Build can go further and issue an order to stop work on a project until the levy is paid.[3] In NSW, large projects of $10 million or more running longer than 12 months may be able to pay by instalments.[1]

The wage-based schemes have no gate before work starts. The employer registers, lodges returns monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly, and pays for as long as eligible workers are on the books.

Is the levy calculated on the price including GST?

It depends on the state, and it moves the number. NSW and the Northern Territory calculate on the GST-inclusive cost, while Queensland calculates on the cost excluding GST.[1][2][3]

The threshold follows the same rule. A $240,000 job excluding GST is $264,000 including GST, which puts it over the NSW $250,000 threshold even though the contract sum on the page looks like it sits under it.

A worked example: the same $5 million job in two states

Take the Gold Coast builder’s situation at a larger scale: a $5 million commercial project, priced at $5,000,000 excluding GST, built once in Queensland and once in NSW.

Queensland. QLeave calculates on the cost excluding GST. $5,000,000 × 0.575% = $28,750. Of that, $17,500 funds long service leave, $6,250 goes to Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and $5,000 goes to Construction Skills Queensland.[2]

NSW. The Long Service Corporation calculates on the cost including GST. $5,500,000 × 0.25% = $13,750.[1]

Same building, same contract value, a $15,000 difference in the statutory line. On a job running at a 5% margin, that gap equals 6% of the entire profit on the job.

Now build it in Victoria. There is no project levy at all. The cost instead arrives through wages: every registered employer on the job pays 2.7% to LeavePlus of their eligible workers’ ordinary pay.[4] If the builder’s own directly employed site team earns $400,000 in ordinary pay over the build, that is $10,800, paid quarterly, and every registered subcontractor carries the same charge on their own workers inside their rates.

$28,750 vs $13,750

The long service levy on the same $5 million project in Queensland and in NSW. Different rate, different GST base, same building.

QLeave and NSW Long Service Corporation rates, September 2026

What happens when the project cost goes up?

The levy is paid on an estimate, and variations, scope growth and provisional sums all move the cost of work after it has been paid.

Queensland is explicit about it. If the final cost of work ends up $50,000 or more above what was originally notified, the final cost must be notified and any additional levy paid within 30 days of the work ending, with supporting documents such as a final progress statement, invoices or accounting extracts.[9] Penalties apply for failing to do so, up to 200 penalty units for a corporation.[9]

NSW also warns that penalties or extra levies may apply where a levy was underpaid because it was based on an incorrect cost estimate.[1]

That turns a one-off approval fee into something tracked to the end of the job. The number QLeave asks for at finalisation should already be in your cost report: the final contract value with every approved variation included.

Why the wage-based schemes are harder to see

A project levy is at least visible: one line, paid once, with an approval that will not issue without it.

The wage-based schemes sit inside labour on-costs next to superannuation and workers’ compensation, which makes them easy to forget in an overhead rate. The base is ordinary pay, and apprentices are exempt in some schemes, including South Australia and the ACT, so two crews with the same headline wage bill can produce different contributions.[6][8]

They also stack across borders. A Canberra contractor with work in Queanbeyan lodges ACT wage returns while paying the NSW project levy. Workers’ service is recognised across schemes, and Victoria’s, for example, counts registered interstate construction work towards the entitlement.[10] For the builder, it means two sets of obligations running at once.

What good looks like

The builders who never lose a start date to the long service levy are not the ones who know every rate by heart. They are the ones whose estimate and cost report treat it as a real cost, not an afterthought.

• The levy is a named line in the estimate, calculated on the right GST base for the state the work is in, not a percentage buried in preliminaries

• Whoever holds the liability under the contract is agreed before the approval application, not discovered at the certifier’s desk

• Payment is on the pre-start checklist next to the construction certificate, so the crane booking and the levy receipt are checked together

• Approved variations roll straight into the current contract value, so any additional levy at finalisation is a known figure, not a scramble

• Wage-based contributions are carried in the labour on-cost rate for each state, and reviewed when a scheme changes its rate

• Cross-border jobs are flagged at tender, so the second scheme is priced before it is owed

The Australian context

Portable long service leave exists because construction workers follow the work between employers, projects and states. The trade-off is eight separate administrations, two funding models, two different GST bases and rate calendars that do not line up. Western Australia’s MyLeave rate, for example, has moved between 2.25% and a COVID relief rate of 0.01% over the last twenty years, and is set each calendar year.[5]

For a single-state builder that is manageable. For anyone tendering across a border it is a genuine estimating risk, and the cost is not only the levy. It is the start date that slips while someone finds the payment portal.

The long service levy is one of several statutory and on-site costs that belong in a properly structured budget, which we cover in how to prepare an accurate construction budget and in preliminaries in construction.

Where Plexa fits

The levy is paid through each scheme’s own portal. Plexa’s job is making sure the number going into it is right, and still right at the end of the job.

In Plexa’s Budget module, the long service levy can sit against its own cost code with the original budget, revisions and commitments tracked beside it, rather than inside a spreadsheet allowance. The Head Contract module tracks approved and pending variations against the client contract, and cost to complete forecasting shows the likely final cost, which is the figure a Queensland finalisation asks for.

On the wage side, Plexa’s Timesheets capture hours against workers and cost codes and route approved labour cost into the budget, as covered in construction labour cost tracking. That keeps labour on-costs visible per project instead of absorbed into an overhead rate.

Back on the Gold Coast, the fix for the Tweed Heads job took about ten minutes once someone noticed. The difference on the next cross-border tender is that the levy is already a line in the estimate, on the right GST base, with the payment on the pre-start checklist. The crane arrives on Wednesday.

Frequently asked questions

What is the long service levy? The charge that funds portable long service leave for construction workers. NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory levy a percentage of the cost of building work; the other five schemes charge employers a percentage of wages.[1][2][3][4]

What is the long service levy rate in NSW? 0.25% of the cost of building and construction work, including GST, for work costing $250,000 or more. The construction certificate or complying development certificate is not released until the levy is paid.[1]

How much is the QLeave levy in Queensland? 0.575% of the cost of work excluding GST, for work costing $150,000 or more. That is 0.35% for long service leave, 0.125% for Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and 0.1% for Construction Skills Queensland. It must be paid before the development permit issues, or before work starts if there is no permit.[2]

Does Victoria have a long service levy on building work? No project levy. Victoria’s scheme, run by LeavePlus, is funded by employers paying 2.7% of the ordinary pay of eligible construction workers, reported and paid quarterly.[4]

Do you pay more levy if the project cost increases? It can. In Queensland, if the final cost of work is $50,000 or more above the amount originally notified, you must notify QLeave and pay the additional levy within 30 days of the work ending. NSW also applies penalties or extra levies where the levy was based on an incorrect cost estimate.[1][9]

Related reading

Variations are what move the final cost of work after the levy is paid, and how they escalate is covered in how construction variations turn into disputes. For the forecast of where that final cost lands, read cost to complete.

If you want to see statutory costs, variations and forecast final cost in one place on your own projects, book a 30-minute demo with the Plexa team.