NSW home owners will learn from May 1 exactly how much they will pay each year to fund fire and emergency services under a new system that will see an average $185 added to council rates notices.
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Treasurer Dominic Perrottet will on Tuesday introduce legislation to usher in the Fire and Emergency Services Levy from July 1.
Currently three-quarters of the annual $950 million cost of funding Fire and Rescue NSW, the Rural Fire Service and the State Emergency Service is funded via a tax on insurance companies, passed onto customers via higher premiums.
The balance is funded by the state and a tax on councils.
The new system instead charges all landowners in NSW an annual levy.
For residential landowners and owners of "public benefit land" such as churches and scout halls, there will be an annual fixed charge is $100 plus an additional amount calculated on the unimproved land value determined by the NSW Valuer-General.
For farms, industrial and commercial landholders the fixed charge will be $200 plus the additional amount.
The precise amount charged to each landowner will be determined by the size of each year's emergency services budget but the government is estimating an average levy of about $185.
Land owners will be able to visit the fire services and emergency services levy website to calculate their annual payment from May 1 - the date at which the 2017-18 emergency service budget will be known.
The shift to a levy on land was recommended by a 2013 parliamentary inquiry which found that 36 per cent - or 810,000 landowners - who do not have home contents insurance would pay the levy for the first time.
But the government says for fully-insured homeowners the fire services levy contribution should drop from an annual average $233 to $185, for a saving of $47 a year.
Professor Allan Fels has been appointed as NSW Emergency Services Levy Insurance Monitor to ensure insurers pass on savings to customers.
The government estimates the proportion of the emergency services budget raised from residential land will be 58.1 per cent. For commercial land it will be 26.7 per cent, industrial land 10.4 per cent, farmland 4.6 per cent and public benefit land 0.3 per cent.
The proportion contributed by a levy on residential land and farm land will be the same as under the old system, while the proportion from public benefit land will fall from 0.8 per cent.
The proportion from industrial and commercial land - 37.1 per cent - increases slightly from the existing 36.6 per cent.
