Florida Taxes the Deed on Your Home at 70 Cents per $100. The Law Does Not Say Which Party Pays It.

Florida charges 70 cents for every $100 of consideration on a deed that transfers a home. On a $1,000,000 Fort Lauderdale home that is $7,000. The statute does not say which party pays it.

The Rate Is in Chapter 201, and It Has Not Moved

Section 201.02 of the Florida Statutes sets the tax. It applies to a deed that conveys an interest in real property. The 2025 edition puts it at 70 cents for each $100 of the consideration. The Florida Department of Revenue's own publication GT-800014 states the same rate. Two best-tier sources, one of them the law itself.

The tax is paid to the county recording official at the time the deed is recorded. When a taxable document is never recorded, it is paid directly to the Department of Revenue instead. Either way the state collects at the instrument, not at the income.

The Three Rates in One Place

These are the figures that Chapter 201 and the Department produce:

• Broward County and most of Florida: 70 cents for every $100 of consideration, or any portion of $100.
• Miami-Dade County, single-family residence: 60 cents for every $100 or portion of $100, with no surtax.
• Miami-Dade County, other property: 60 cents plus a 45 cent surtax, for $1.05 for every $100 or portion of $100.

Run a $1,000,000 single-family price through the first two and the gap is real. Broward produces $7,000. Miami-Dade produces $6,000. A homeowner moving north from Miami-Dade should not carry the old figure north with them.

Consideration Is Not the Cash at the Table

The Department's own worked example starts with a $25,000 down payment and a $275,000 note and mortgage. It adds the two to $300,000 and taxes the whole figure. That comes to 3,000 increments of $100 and $2,100 in tax.

What the buyer finances counts as consideration. A homeowner who prices the deed tax off the cash portion alone will be short. Short by the size of the mortgage.

A Portion of $100 Is Taxed as a Full $100

The rate language is "70 cents for every $100 or any portion of $100." The Department's second example makes the rounding visible. A property exchange valued at $42,475 divides into 424.75 hundreds, and the Department counts 425 of them. The tax is $297.50.

The same rule applies at the top of the market. A price of $1,000,050 divides into 10,000.5 hundreds, which the rule treats as 10,001. Fifty dollars of price buys 70 cents of tax. That is a trivial amount of money on its own. It is also the kind of number that makes a closing statement fail to reconcile.

Every Party Is Liable, Whatever the Contract Says

The Department states that all parties are liable for the tax. That holds regardless of which party agrees to pay it. The only exception is a party the statute itself exempts.

That is the line homeowners misread. The contract decides who writes the check at closing. It does not decide who the state can come to if the check does not clear.

What We Could Not Confirm

Two things, and both of them matter.

Broward County's recording fee pages returned no figures on either page we read today. So we are not printing a per page recording fee here. And no total closing cost estimate built on one.

Nothing in Chapter 201 states a Broward County custom for who pays the deed tax. Nothing in the Department's own publications does either. Custom is a contract term, not a rate. Ask for it in writing before you sign.

How to Check the Number on a Real Deed

Recorded deeds are public. Broward County's Records, Taxes and Treasury Division names one search application for the County's official records. It is the Broward County Official Records Website, at officialrecords.broward.org/AcclaimWeb.

We did not verify what each record displays, so read one before you rely on it. The County page states no date range and no fee, and we are not printing either.

Lourdes Maestres has spent 17 years selling luxury real estate in Fort Lauderdale. The homeowners who get surprised at closing are rarely the ones who never read the contract. They are the ones who read it and assumed the law behind it had already assigned the tax.

Lourdes and the MPH Team will price the deed tax on your own home. You will see the figure, and the rate it came from.