Quebec transfer duties.

Where the name comes from, and why it is a joke

The tax has a legal name (droits sur les mutations immobilières, transfer duties) and a nickname everyone actually uses: taxe de bienvenue, the welcome tax. The nickname is a pun. It refers to Jean Bienvenue, the Minister of Municipal Affairs who brought in the legislation in the mid-1970s, and the fact that bienvenue also means welcome made the joke irresistible. It has stuck for fifty years, which is unfortunate, because a name that sounds like a formality has helped a great many buyers treat a four-figure bill as an afterthought.

It is not a provincial tax. Every municipality in Quebec is required by section 2 of the Act to collect duties on transfers within its territory, and the revenue stays with the municipality. That is why the rates are partly provincial and partly local, and why the answer for Montreal is different from the answer for everywhere else.

The 2026 statutory brackets

Section 2 sets three tranches, applied marginally: each slice of the basis of imposition is taxed at its own rate. The dollar thresholds are indexed every year, so a rate table without a year attached to it is useless. For the 2026 municipal fiscal year they are:

• 0.5% on the portion up to $62,900
• 1% on the portion above $62,900 and up to $315,000
• 1.5% on the portion above $315,000

The indexation mechanism is in section 2.1: the thresholds rise each year by the increase in Quebec’s all-items Consumer Price Index as established by the Institut de la statistique du Québec, using a two-year lag. The rate of increase used to set the 2026 amounts was 2.3438%, published in the Gazette officielle.

This is the rate structure for every Quebec municipality that has not legislated something higher, which is most of them, and includes Quebec City, Laval, Gatineau, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières for the great majority of transactions.

The basis of imposition is not your purchase price

This is the single most consequential rule on the page, and it is where a calculator that simply multiplies the price gets the answer wrong.

Section 2 defines the basis of imposition as the greatest of three amounts:

1. the consideration actually furnished for the transfer;
2. the consideration stipulated in the deed; and
3. the market value of the immovable at the time of transfer.

Market value here is not an appraiser’s opinion. The Act ties it to the value entered on the municipal assessment roll, multiplied by the comparative factor established under section 264 of the Act respecting municipal taxation. The comparative factor exists because assessment rolls are only re-done every few years and drift away from the market in between; it is the municipality’s official multiplier for bringing a stale roll value up to current conditions.

The practical consequences are worth spelling out, because each one surprises somebody every year:

• You can pay duties on more than you paid. If you buy below the adjusted roll value (a genuine bargain, a distressed sale, a soft market) the duties are calculated on the roll figure. The saving on the price does not reduce the tax.
• A family sale at a nominal price is taxed at full value. Selling a triplex to your child for $1 does not produce $0.01 of duties. It produces duties on the adjusted roll value, unless a specific exemption applies.
• The comparative factor changes annually. The same property transferred in two consecutive Januaries can attract materially different duties with no change in the roll value itself.

Ask the municipality for the current roll value and the current comparative factor before closing. Both are public, and the product of the two is the number the bill will be based on if it exceeds your price.

Montreal is a special case in law, not just in price

The third paragraph of section 2 lets a municipality set a rate higher than the statutory 1.5% by by-law, but only on the portion of the basis of imposition above $500,000. That paragraph then caps the rate a municipality may set at 3%: “except in the case of Ville de Montréal.” Montreal is named in the statute as the one municipality permitted to exceed 3%, and it uses that permission.

Two corrections to what most pages say about the Montreal ladder:

• Montreal has no 3% bracket. The commonly reproduced table showing a 3% step is wrong. The city’s ladder steps from 2.5% to 3.5% and then to 4%, skipping 3% entirely. Its top rate is 4%, applying above roughly $3.11 million.
• Only Montreal’s two lowest thresholds indexed for 2026. Section 2.1 indexes the amounts that establish the three statutory tranches, and nothing more. The bands Montreal sets by by-law above $500,000 are municipal, not statutory, so they sit outside the indexation rule and moved only when the city chose to move them. A page that indexes the whole Montreal ladder by 2.3438% produces figures the city never published.

The calculator above deliberately applies the statutory brackets only. For a Montreal purchase, treat its output as the floor and get the current band table from the city, because on a $1.5 million Montreal property the difference between the statutory 1.5% and the municipal ladder runs into five figures.

Montreal is also the reason the province stepped in on first-time buyer help. The city’s own home purchase grant closed on 7 July 2026. It has been replaced by a provincial refundable credit, which is available across Quebec rather than in Montreal alone: it refunds 100% of the first $5,000 of duties plus 25% of the next $3,500, capping the benefit at $5,875, and it phases out to nothing at a basis of imposition of $1,000,000. If you have found a page describing the Montreal grant, check its date, that programme is closed.

The $200 that catches “exempt” transfers

Quebec exempts a list of transfers from the duties: between spouses, from a parent to a child, to and from a wholly-controlled corporation, and others. The word “exempt” is doing less work than it appears to.

Section 20.4 imposes special duties (the droit supplétif) where the ordinary duties are not payable. The amount is $200. Where the basis of imposition would have been under $40,000, the special duties are instead equal to what the transfer duties would have been, which is the only case in which an exempt transfer costs less than $200.

So the honest description of a family transfer in Quebec is not “free”: it is $200, plus notarial fees and registration costs. That is still a very good outcome compared with the several thousand dollars the ordinary duties would have cost, and the exemptions are well worth claiming, but budget the $200 and do not be surprised by an invoice on a transfer you were told was exempt.

The bill arrives after you move in

In Ontario and British Columbia the transfer tax is paid at registration, out of the closing funds your lawyer or notary holds. Quebec works differently, and this is the most common practical mistake buyers make.

Your notary registers the deed. The municipality is then notified of the transfer, calculates the duties, and issues an invoice to you directly: typically some weeks after closing, and sometimes a few months, depending on the municipality’s cycle. The notary does not usually collect it and it does not usually appear on the statement of adjustments.

Because the money is not taken from you on closing day, it is extremely easy to spend it. A buyer who used every last dollar on the down payment, the notary and the movers gets a four-figure bill from the city at exactly the moment the reserves are gone. Set the amount aside on closing day in a separate account and forget about it until the invoice arrives.

Payment terms are set by each municipality and some allow instalments. Interest and penalties on late payment are municipal too, and they are not gentle.

What the number means for the purchase

Transfer duties are the largest single closing cost on most Quebec purchases outside Montreal, and they behave differently from a cost you can finance. They cannot be added to the mortgage, they are not deductible on a principal residence, and they are payable whether or not the purchase turns out well.

Three things to do with the figure above. Get the adjusted roll value from the municipality first, because if it exceeds your price it (not your price) sets the bill. If you are a first-time buyer, check the provincial refundable credit, which is worth up to $5,875 and phases out at a $1,000,000 basis of imposition. And if you are buying in Montreal, treat the statutory calculation as a floor rather than an answer, because the municipal ladder above $500,000 is where the money is.