Florida charges 70 cents in documentary stamp tax on every $100 of consideration when a deed is recorded, and that rate holds in 66 of the state's 67 counties. Miami-Dade is the one exception, and the exception cuts in both directions.
Section 201.02(1)(a), Florida Statutes, sets the statewide rate: "on each $100 of the consideration therefor the tax shall be 70 cents." The Florida Department of Revenue's guidance sheet, Documentary Stamp Tax, Form GT-800014 (R. 12/17), carves out the county by name — "An exception is Miami-Dade County, where the rate is $.60 per $100 (or portion thereof) when the property is a single-family residence."
Buy a house in Coral Gables and the deed tax is lower than it would be on the identical price in Broward. Buy the duplex next door and it is meaningfully higher, because a 45-cent discretionary surtax attaches to every conveyance that is not a single-family residence.
Miami-Dade records deeds at 60 cents per $100 of consideration rather than the 70 cents charged in Florida's other 66 counties. On property that is not a single-family residence, a 45-cent surtax brings the total to $1.05 per $100.
What The Miami-Dade Deed Surtax Actually Is
The surtax is a county-level document tax authorized by Section 125.0167, Florida Statutes, and levied through Section 201.031, F.S. It rides on top of the same taxable event as the deed stamp — the recording of a document that transfers an interest in real property.
The statutory ceiling is precise: "The rate of the surtax shall not exceed the rate of 45 cents for each $100 or fractional part thereof of the consideration therefor." Miami-Dade levies it at the full 45 cents, and the Miami-Dade Clerk of Court's recording schedule confirms the operative rule — "Surtax is required on transfers of interest in any real property other than a single-family residence."
What matters at the closing table is that these are two separate assessments computed off the same consideration figure, not one blended rate. Keep in mind that the 60-cent stamp is owed on every Miami-Dade deed, while the 45-cent surtax is owed only on the non-residential side of the line.
Why Miami-Dade Is The Only County That Can Charge It
Section 125.0167 does not open the surtax to every Florida county. It grants the authority to "the governing authority in each county, as defined by s. 125.011(1)," and that definition is where the map narrows to one.
Section 125.011(1), F.S. defines "county" as any county operating under a home rule charter adopted pursuant to ss. 10, 11, and 24, Art. VIII of the State Constitution of 1885. Miami-Dade is the only Florida county that fits, which is why no county commission in Orange, Hillsborough, Duval, or Broward can copy the ordinance even if it wanted the revenue.
Section 125.011(1), F.S. limits the surtax to a county operating under an 1885-Constitution home rule charter. Miami-Dade is the only one, so no other Florida county can levy the 45-cent document surtax.
The revenue is also earmarked, which is worth knowing if you are trying to understand why the exception has survived. Section 125.0167 directs the county to deposit the money in its Housing Assistance Loan Trust Fund and "use the revenues only to help finance the construction, rehabilitation, or purchase of housing for low-income families and moderate-income families."
What Counts As A Single-Family Residence Under Section 125.0167
This is the sentence that decides your number, and it is narrower and stranger than most buyers expect. The statute exempts "any document pursuant to which the interest granted, assigned, transferred, or conveyed involves only a single-family residence," then defines that term expressly.
Per Section 125.0167, a qualifying single-family residence includes but is not limited to:
- A detached dwelling. The ordinary single-family house, which is the bulk of exempt Miami-Dade closings.
- A condominium unit. The statute names condominium units directly, so a condo deed is taxed at 60 cents per $100 with no surtax. If you are working through Florida condo financing rules, this is one line item that does not get worse in Miami-Dade.
- A qualifying cooperative unit. Specifically, "a unit held through stock ownership or membership representing a proprietary interest in a corporation owning a fee or a leasehold initially in excess of 98 years."
Section 125.0167 defines a single-family residence as a detached dwelling, a condominium unit, or a co-op unit in a corporation owning the fee or a leasehold initially over 98 years. Those owe no surtax.
That co-op clause is the trap. Miami-Dade and Miami Beach hold a large stock of older cooperative buildings, and where the corporation sits on a ground lease that was not initially in excess of 98 years, the unit does not meet the statutory definition — which means the surtax applies to a conveyance a buyer reasonably assumed was a residence.
The Rate Table, As The Department Of Revenue Publishes It
The Department of Revenue states the tiers in three lines, and reproducing them in the source's own order avoids the most common error, which is treating $1.05 as a single Miami-Dade rate. Here is the structure exactly as GT-800014 lays it out:
| Where and what | Deed stamp per $100 | Surtax per $100 | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Florida counties except Miami-Dade — any property type | $0.70 | None | $0.70 |
| Miami-Dade — single-family residence | $0.60 | None | $0.60 |
| Miami-Dade — anything other than a single-family residence | $0.60 | $0.45 | $1.05 |
Read down that third column and the county's design becomes clear. Miami-Dade residential buyers pay about 14 percent less deed tax than the rest of Florida, while everyone else in the county pays 50 percent more.
A Worked Calculation On The Same $650,000 In Two Different Buildings
The cleanest way to see the surtax is to hold price constant and change only the property type. The figures below are illustrative, built on a $650,000 contract price with a $520,000 first mortgage at 80 percent loan-to-value; the tax rates themselves come from the statutes and the DOR sheet cited above.
| Closing line | Detached house | Duplex | Governing source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deed documentary stamps (6,500 units × rate) | $3,900.00 | $3,900.00 | s. 201.02(1)(a), F.S. |
| Discretionary surtax (6,500 units × $0.45) | $0.00 | $2,925.00 | s. 125.0167, F.S. |
| Note and mortgage stamps ($520,000 ÷ 100 × $0.35) | $1,820.00 | $1,820.00 | s. 201.08, F.S. |
| Nonrecurring intangible tax ($520,000 × 0.002) | $1,040.00 | $1,040.00 | s. 199.133, F.S. |
| Total state and county transaction tax | $6,760.00 | $8,725.00 | — |
The gap between those two columns is $2,925, and every dollar of it is the surtax. For comparison, the same $650,000 detached house recorded in Broward would carry $4,550 in deed stamps rather than $3,900 — a $650 Miami-Dade advantage that quietly reverses into a $2,275 penalty the moment the property becomes a two-unit building.
That reversal is the number to model if you are underwriting a small multifamily purchase. Anyone running the math on house hacking a two-to-four-unit property in Miami-Dade should treat the surtax as a real acquisition cost rather than a rounding error, and the same applies to investor purchases financed with DSCR loans.
The Fractional-Part Rule That Rounds Your Bill Up
Both assessments are charged "for each $100 or fractional part thereof," which means the county rounds the unit count up, never down. A round contract price hides this; a negotiated one does not.
Take a $650,150 duplex contract. Dividing by 100 gives 6,501.5 units, which rounds up to 6,502 — so the deed stamp is 6,502 × $0.60, or $3,901.20, and the surtax is 6,502 × $0.45, or $2,925.90.
Both the 60-cent tax and the 45-cent surtax are charged on each $100 or fractional part thereof. A $650,150 price rounds up to 6,502 units, so the surtax is 6,502 × $0.45, or $2,925.90.
The rounding is trivial in dollar terms and consequential in reconciliation terms. If your closing agent's figure is 60 cents or 45 cents off from your own arithmetic, the fractional-part rule is almost always the reason.
Which Closing Disclosure Line Moves, And Which Does Not
Transfer taxes have a fixed home on the federal Closing Disclosure. Under 12 CFR 1026.38(g)(1), Section E of the form carries recording fees for deeds and security instruments on the first line, followed by an itemization of transfer taxes on separate lines that must name "the government entity assessing the transfer tax."
In a Miami-Dade closing, that means the surtax appears in Section E as its own transfer-tax line attributable to the county, distinct from the state documentary stamp line. Be aware that a settlement agent who blends both into a single "$1.05 doc stamps" entry has produced a total you cannot audit against either statute.
The surtax lands in Section E of the Closing Disclosure, itemized as a transfer tax under 12 CFR 1026.38(g)(1). Mortgage stamps and the 2-mill intangible tax sit on separate lines and do not change.
Just as important is what the surtax does not touch. The mortgage stamp under Section 201.08, F.S. stays at 35 cents per $100 of indebtedness and the nonrecurring intangible tax under Section 199.133, F.S. stays at 2 mills per dollar, exactly as they do in every other Florida county — a point covered in more depth in our breakdown of Florida doc stamps and the intangible tax.
Recording fees are a third category again. The Miami-Dade Clerk's schedule lists $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, plus $1 per indexed name beyond four, so a two-page deed records for $18.50 while a twenty-page mortgage records for $171.50.
Who Actually Pays The Surtax
Florida law is deliberately silent on allocation. The Department of Revenue puts it directly: "Documentary stamp tax is payable by any of the parties to a taxable transaction," and if one party is exempt, the tax falls on the party that is not.
Florida law makes documentary stamp tax payable by any party to the transaction, so the statute does not assign it. The purchase contract decides who funds the surtax line at closing.
Because the statute assigns nothing, the purchase contract does. The standard Florida residential form used in most transactions puts the deed stamps and surtax on the seller and the note-and-mortgage taxes on the buyer, though that is a contract term rather than a legal requirement and it is negotiable in both directions.
On commercial and vacant-land contracts, where the surtax bites hardest, allocation is genuinely up for grabs and is frequently split. You may want to confirm the allocation language on your own executed contract rather than assuming county custom, particularly if the deal was papered on a form drafted outside Florida.
Where The Surtax Catches Buyers Off Guard
Most of the surprise cases share a shape: the buyer thinks of the purchase as residential, and the statute does not. Transactions that draw the 45-cent surtax include but are not limited to:
- Vacant residential lots. A lot on which you plan to build a house is not yet a single-family residence, so the surtax applies to the land purchase even though the finished home would have been exempt.
- Two-to-four-unit buildings. Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes fall outside the statutory definition entirely, which is the single most expensive surprise in the county's residential-adjacent market.
- Cooperative units on short ground leases. As above, the corporation must own the fee or a leasehold initially in excess of 98 years for the exemption to reach the unit.
- Commercial, industrial, and mixed-use property. These were always the intended target of the levy and are taxed at the full combined $1.05 per $100.
- Assignments of leasehold interest. The DOR treats these as transfers of an interest in real property, so a non-residential leasehold assignment can carry both the stamp and the surtax.
All of these run through the same test rather than through any judgment about intent or use. The question the Clerk answers is whether the document conveys only a single-family residence as Section 125.0167 defines the term, and nothing else about the transaction changes the answer.
How To Verify Your Number Before You Sign
The arithmetic here is simple enough to check by hand, and checking it is worth the two minutes. Divide the consideration by 100, round up to the next whole unit, multiply by $0.60, and then multiply by $0.45 again if the property is anything other than a single-family residence.
Compare that result against Section E of your Closing Disclosure, and if the two disagree, ask the settlement agent which line the difference sits on. Note that consideration is broader than the sale price — the DOR counts money paid, obligations discharged, and any mortgage or other lien encumbering the property, and where the consideration is property rather than money it equals the fair market value of the real property.
The Miami-Dade Clerk of Court publishes the governing recording and stamp schedule, and the Florida Department of Revenue publishes the rate guidance in GT-800014. If your figure and the closing agent's figure will not reconcile, those two sources settle it — not the lender's estimate and not the listing agent's rule of thumb.
Buyers moving within Florida have one more variable to line up, since the deed tax is only one of several county-pinned costs in a Florida purchase. Our Florida mortgage guide covers the financing side, and if you are selling one Florida homestead to buy another, Florida homestead portability governs the property-tax half of the same move.
County-level transfer taxes behave this way all over the country, and Miami-Dade is simply one of the more legible examples. Readers comparing markets may find it useful to see how Chicago's transfer tax splits between buyer and seller or how the Howard County transfer tax stacks state and county layers on the same recording event.
The Line To Watch
Miami-Dade's deed tax is not complicated once the single-family test is settled, and the whole question resolves into one binary that moves roughly $4,500 per million dollars of price. Determine which side of Section 125.0167 your property sits on, run the four-step calculation above, and reconcile it against Section E before you wire.
If the property is a house or a condominium, the county is charging you less than the rest of Florida would. If it is anything else, budget the surtax at contract, not at closing.
This article is for informational purposes and is not financial or mortgage advice. Consult a licensed professional in your jurisdiction.