Which Connecticut towns charge more than 0.25% conveyance tax
Nineteen municipalities are eligible to add a surcharge. Sixteen actually did, two did not, and one charges a stepped rate.
Every town in Connecticut charges a municipal conveyance tax. The base rate is 0.25% of the sale price, and most of the state’s 169 towns charge exactly that.
A short list of municipalities is eligible to add another 0.25% on top. Eligibility and what a town actually charges are two different things, and treating them as the same is the most common error in published lists of these rates.
The nineteen eligible municipalities
Bloomfield, Bridgeport, Bristol, East Hartford, Groton, Hamden, Hartford, Meriden, Middletown, New Britain, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, Norwich, Southington, Stamford, Thomaston, Waterbury, and Windham.
That is the eighteen designated targeted investment communities, plus Bloomfield, which qualifies through a manufacturing plant with enterprise-zone benefits.
What each of them actually charges
Sixteen added the full surcharge and charge 0.50%: Bloomfield, Bridgeport, Bristol, East Hartford, Hamden, Hartford, Meriden, Middletown, New Britain, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, Norwich, Southington, Waterbury, and Windham.
Two are eligible and added nothing. Groton and Thomaston charge the base 0.25%.
One is a partial, stepped add-on. Stamford charges 0.35% on a property sold for up to $1,000,000 and 0.50% on a property sold for more, applied to the whole price rather than tapering. That step is worth about $1,500 at the boundary and has its own guide.
Every other Connecticut town charges 0.25%.
One town that is frequently listed and should not be
West Haven appears on several published versions of this list. It is not an eligible municipality and does not appear in the OLR table. Listing it at 0.50% overstates a West Haven seller’s municipal tax by 0.25%, which is $1,125 on a $450,000 sale.
If you are checking a list of these rates somewhere else, that is the entry worth looking for. A plausible-sounding city name is how the error spreads.
Source: OLR Report 2020-R-0020, Real Estate Conveyance Tax, Table 2 and the accompanying text.
Sources
- Primary sourceReal Estate Conveyance TaxConnecticut General Assembly, Office of Legislative Research
Every figure in this guide is checked against these sources before it publishes. Where a figure has no source, the guide leaves it out rather than estimating.
General information about Connecticut real estate transactions, not legal advice. Every transaction is different.