THE CITY OF MONTREAL ADOPTS A NEW VALUE BRACKET FOR THE COMPUTATION OF THE TRANSFER DUTIES
The Act Respecting Duties on Transfers of Immovables allows municipalities, by by-law, to set a higher rate to compute the duties on the transfer of an immovable for any part of the basis of imposition[1] which exceeds $500,000.
Article 2 of this Act provides that this rate cannot exceed 3%, except in the case of the City of Montreal, which is authorized to set a rate above 3%.
It appears that the City of Montreal recently adopted a by-law allowing, as of February 1, 2022, to set a rate of 4% on the tax base equal to or greater than $3,000,000. Also, the applicable rate for the portion between $2,059,000 and $3,000,000 will be increased to 3.5%.
This means that as of February 1, 2022, the applicable rates for the transfer of an immovable property on the territory of the City of Montreal will be as follows:
| Tax base value as of February 1, 2022 | Rate |
| 1. $0 to $53,200 | 0.5% |
| 2. $53,200 to $266,200 | 1% |
| 3. $266,200 to $532,300 | 1.5% |
| 4. $532 300 to $1 064 600 | 2% |
| 5. $1,064,600 to $2,059,000 | 2.5% |
| 6. $2 059,000 to $3,000,000 | 3.5% |
| 7. Higher than $3,000,000 $ | 4% |
For example, for a basis of imposition of $5,000,000, the transfer duties payable for a transaction executed in January 2022 would have been of $130,275. However, as of February 1, the transfer duties payable will be of $154,828.50 $.
[1] The basis of imposition for the transfer duties is the greatest of (1) the amount of the consideration furnished for the transfer of the immovable, (2) the amount of the consideration stipulated for the transfer of the immovable, or (3) the amount of the market value of the immovable at the time of its transfer (obtained by multiplying the value entered on the roll for the unit or part corresponding to the transferred immovable, as the case may be, by the factor of the roll).