A $1,000,000 assessed home pays $7,228.89 a year in property tax in Markham and $15,753.42 in Oshawa. Here are the 2026 residential rates across the GTA, and why Toronto's low rate still produces a high bill.
Written by Hamidreza Etebarian on
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A home assessed at $1,000,000 pays $7,228.89 in annual property tax in Markham and $15,753.42 in Oshawa. Same assessed value, same province, and a gap of $8,524.53 that comes down to which municipal boundary the property sits inside. Toronto lands near the bottom of that range at $7,673.11, which surprises people who have heard for years that Toronto property taxes are punishing. The rate is one of the lowest in the region. The assessed values it applies to are among the highest, and that is most of the explanation.
Every figure below is a total residential rate: the municipal portion, the regional portion where an upper-tier region exists, and the provincial education portion. Multiply the total rate by the MPAC assessed value and you have the annual bill.
The top of that list is 2.18 times the bottom. On the same assessed value, an Oshawa owner pays $8,524.53 more a year than a Markham owner, which is the difference between two very different monthly budgets. Every rate here was read from the municipality's own page on September 23, 2026. Councils reset these rates each year when they pass the annual tax by-law, so confirm the current year before you rely on any figure.
A municipal tax rate is not a statement of political character. It is arithmetic. Council decides how much money it needs to raise, then divides that levy across the total assessed value of everything it can tax. A city sitting on a very large assessment base funds itself at a lower rate than a city sitting on a small one, even when the two spend similar amounts per household.
Toronto's 2026 residential rate splits into a city rate of 0.605295 per cent, the provincial education rate of 0.153000 per cent, and a City Building Fund levy of 0.009016 per cent (City of Toronto, 2026 Property Tax Rates). Nothing sits above it, because Toronto is a single-tier municipality and does not belong to an upper-tier region.
Markham works differently. The city keeps 0.177477 per cent and York Region levies 0.392412 per cent on top of it (City of Markham, 2026 tax rates). Markham's own share is less than a third of Toronto's city rate, but the regional levy closes most of the gap, and the two totals finish within five hundredths of a percentage point of each other. Comparing only the municipal line on two bills will tell you the wrong thing.
The rate is half of the calculation. The other half is the MPAC assessment, and Ontario's assessed values have not moved in years. Assessments for the 2026 property tax year are still based on fully phased-in January 1, 2016 current values, because the province postponed the 2020 Assessment Update and later extended that postponement (MPAC, The Assessment Cycle, retrieved September 23, 2026).
That freeze matters in two ways. A Toronto home was worth more on January 1, 2016 than a comparable Oshawa home was, so a lower rate applied to a larger number can still produce a larger bill. A Toronto property assessed at $1,200,000 pays $9,207.73 at the 2026 rate, which is more than an Oshawa property assessed at $550,000 pays at a rate roughly twice as high. The freeze also means a sale does not by itself reset the assessment. Paying $1.4 million for a house that MPAC still values at $780,000 leaves the assessment where it was, and the bill follows the assessment.
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Outside Toronto, three levels of government share every residential tax bill in the GTA.
The regional share is not a rounding error. In Mississauga the Region of Peel levies 0.538760 per cent against the city's own 0.396141 per cent (City of Mississauga By-law 0061-2026). In Oshawa the Region of Durham levies 0.763146 per cent against the city's 0.659196 per cent (City of Oshawa, 2026 final tax rates). Two municipalities can set similar local rates and still send out very different bills.
The total rate covers annual property tax and nothing else. Toronto adds a Vacant Home Tax of 3 per cent of Current Value Assessment on residential property left empty for six months or more in a taxation year, and that is a separate tax with its own annual declaration and its own deadline. Our Toronto Vacant Home Tax guide covers who has to declare and what a buyer can inherit at closing. Water, wastewater and waste charges are also billed separately from property tax in several GTA municipalities, so a low tax rate does not always mean a low total municipal bill.
If you are weighing two municipalities against each other, pull the current rate from each city's own tax page before you run the comparison, because these numbers reset annually and third-party summaries go stale quickly. Read the MPAC assessment off the seller's bill rather than guessing from the list price. You can browse active Ontario listings or search Toronto on Zealty while you work through the numbers. Ontario listing data on Zealty comes from the CREA Data Distribution Facility (DDF) feed, and it covers active listings rather than sold history.
This article is educational and is not tax or legal advice. Confirm your own situation with the municipality and with a lawyer or tax professional before you act on any of it.
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