The richest and poorest postcodes in Australia: Tim Lawless

The richest and poorest postcodes in Australia: Tim Lawless

Tim LawlessDecember 8, 2020

The Australian Taxation Office has recently released its annual set of Taxation Statistics (you can see the whole report here) for the 2009-10 financial year. This is always a fascinating read (shame about the time it takes to be published, though), particularly the tables, which provide an insight about average taxable income across each of Australia’s postcodes.

I’ve provided a summary of the top earning postcodes below across both the capital cities and regional markets as well as those capital city postcodes where mean incomes are the lowest. We’ve also put together a bunch of thematic maps, which are probably the best way to highlight the wealth trends across the capital cities.

The top earners are the usual suspects, mostly clustered around Sydney Harbour, the western suburbs of Perth and a few bayside/inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Nationally there are 47 postcodes with a mean taxable income of more than $100,000; that’s 11 more than recorded across the previous financial year. More than half (57%) of these high-income postcodes are located in Sydney, 21% are in Melbourne and 15% are in Perth. Canberra and Brisbane showed only one postcode each recording a mean taxable income of at least $100,000, while the only regional postcode made the high-earners list is 3441, which is home to the Macedon Ranges suburb of Mount Macedon.

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The highest-income postcodes outside the capital cities are typically located in resource rich areas like Queensland’s Bowen Basin and the Western Australia’s Pilbara.
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The lowest-income capital city postcodes are primarily located in the outer fringes of Melbourne and Adelaide, with these locations comprising 40% and 35% respectively of the top 20 list for lowest capital city mean taxable incomes. Even though these postcodes have comparatively low taxable incomes, you can see that each one has recorded an increase in mean taxable income over the most recent financial year.
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