CostAlberta and Saskatchewan are the only two Canadian provinces with no land transfer tax. Both charge small, flat title registration fees instead, calculated on a much smaller scale than a percentage-of-price tax.
The two provinces
Alberta and Saskatchewan are the only provinces in Canada that charge no land transfer tax at all. Every other province and territory charges some form of it, whether structured as marginal brackets (Ontario, BC, Manitoba), a flat percentage, or — in Quebec's case — a separately billed municipal "welcome tax." See our full province-by-province comparison for the complete picture.
What they charge instead
Both provinces still charge a title registration fee — a small, flat charge for registering the transfer and any new mortgage, calculated on a much smaller basis than a percentage of the purchase price. On a typical home purchase, this fee generally runs a few hundred dollars total, regardless of whether the home costs $300,000 or $900,000, which is a fundamentally different cost structure than a percentage-based tax.
What that actually saves you
$600,000 home: Alberta vs. Ontario
| Alberta land transfer tax | $0 (registration fee only, ~$400) |
| Ontario land transfer tax | ~$8,475 |
| Difference | ~$8,075 |
That's a real, meaningful difference on a purchase of this size — worth factoring in if you have genuine flexibility about where you're buying, though obviously not a reason on its own to choose a province you wouldn't otherwise want to live in. See your exact number for any province on the closing cost calculator.