When Do You Pay a Transfer Tax on Land in Florida?
- In Florida, documentary stamp taxes are set at the county level. However, as of 2011, every county in the state of Florida charges the same rate for documentary stamp tax except for Miami-Dade. For tax purposes, the state of Florida divides the value of the property being transferred into $100 increments and you pay a tax of $0.70 for every $100 increment. If you live in Miami-Dade county, you pay just $0.60 for every $100 increment of the value of a single family home being transferred, but you pay $1.05 per $100 increment on all other transfers of property.
- If you sell a $100,000 plot of land in Florida, you must pay $700 in tax if you live in a county other than Miami-Dade and you must pay $1,050 in taxes if you sell land in that county. However, the state imposes a cap on the documentary stamp tax so regardless of the value of the property being transferred, your stamp tax cannot exceed $2,450 when you sell or transfer ownership of your land or real estate.
- Deeds for land and other real estate are recorded at the county courthouse. You must pay the documentary stamp tax when you record the deed. You pay the taxes to the Florida department of revenue but you also have to pay a recording fee to have the deed recorded by the clerk of court. The recording fee varies from county to county. If you pay the documentary stamp tax late, you pay a penalty. The penalty accrues at a rate of 10 percent of the overdue taxes, per month. However, the state caps the penalty tax at 50 percent of the amount that you were originally due to pay.
- Aside from paying documentary stamp tax on transfers of land and real property, you must also pay the tax when you take out a loan or record a lien on a piece of property. Therefore, if you finance a plot of land, you pay taxes both to transfer the deed and to record the land loan. In all Florida counties, you pay documentary stamp tax on loan documents at a rate of $0.35 per $100 of the loan amount. However, unlike taxes on deeds, the taxes on loan documents are not capped.