Real Property
Real Estate Taxes:
Real Property Conveyance (Transfer) Fees:
Amounts Collected, by County, Calendar Year 1996
Ohio Revised Code Section 319.54(F)(3) establishes a
mandatory transfer fee on the conveyance of real property.
The fee is one dollar per thousand dollars of value of real
property transferred. In addition, Ohio Revised Code Section
322.02 allows the board of county commissioners of each
county to levy a permissive real property transfer fee of up
to three dollars per thousand dollars of value of real
property transferred. In simple terms, both the mandatory fee
and the permissive county fee (a maximum of 4 mills) apply to
the selling price of real estate at the time of sale. The
revenue from both the mandatory fee and the permissive fee is
deposited in the general fund of the county--none of the
revenue goes to the state.
County auditors reported total collections of $74.3 million
($26.8 million mandatory fees and $47.5 million from the
permissive fees) during 1996 on real property conveyances.
The number of conveyances by county on which the mandatory
transfer fees were collected ranged from 372 in Noble County
to 27,097 in Franklin County. The total mandatory transfer
fees collected by each county ranged from $13,316 in Noble
County to $3.5 million in Franklin County. The average
mandatory transfer fee collected by each county ranged from
$26.01 in Columbiana County to $200.88 in Hamilton County,
with a statewide average of $95.97. For the 66 counties
having a permissive real property transfer fee in effect in
1996, the total collected (both mandatory fee and permissive
fee) ranged from $14,347 in Morgan County to $13.4 million in
Cuyahoga County.
Ohio Revised Code Section 319.54(F)(3) exempts certain
conveyances from the mandatory transfer fee. During 1996, a
total of 207,656 (42.7 percent of the total) transfer fee
statements filed with the county auditors were exempted from
the fee. The lowest percentage exempted was in Delaware
County with 27.4 percent exempted. Wyandot County, with 65.5
percent had the highest percentage exempted. The statewide
average percentage exempted was 42.7 percent.
Table PC-1 shows the revenues collected by each county from
both the mandatory transfer fee and the permissive real
property transfer fee. The data presented in the table were
compiled from a survey of county auditors conducted by the
Ohio Department of Taxation