Real estate transfer duties in Switzerland: rules, costs and implications for your purchase

When you are considering buying a property, the transfer duties (or transfer tax) constitute one of the first items of additional expenses to include in the overall cost of your mortgage:

• The tax rate on transfers is defined and collected by the cantons and, in some cases, by the municipalities, and not by the Confederation.
  
• It is a one-time and occasional tax due at the moment when the property legally changes owner (the "transfer").
  
• In the majority of cantons, the transfer duties are borne by the buyer.

What do transfer duties consist of in Switzerland?

Each transfer of ownership, whether it concerns an apartment, a house, a building, or a plot of land, automatically triggers the collection of transfer duties.

Transfer duties: definition

Transfer duties constitute a tax at the moment of the change of owner of a property or when a real right is transferred, such as an easement or a distinct and permanent right.

Historically, this tax served to finance the local administration and to guarantee the updating of the land register. Over time, it has maintained this role while adapting to contemporary practices.

What is the legal framework for transfer duties?

Transfer duty is governed mainly by cantonal legislation. For example, the canton of Vaud has the Law on Transfer Duties and Related Taxes (LDMT), and the canton of Geneva has the Law on Registration Duties (LDE).

In practice, there is no single and harmonized federal law that sets the rate or the rules of application for the entire country.

Good to know: some cantons (such as Zurich, Zug, Schwyz, Uri, Glarus, and Schaffhausen) do not levy transfer duty in the strict sense, or have replaced it with simple land register fees.

What is the difference between transfer duties and notary fees?

As a reminder, the transfer duty is a cantonal tax collected by the canton or the municipality at the time of the transfer of ownership, serving public financing. Notary fees, by contrast, constitute the notary’s remuneration for authentication services and include the fees as well as various administrative disbursements advanced to guarantee the legal validity of the transaction.

How much are transfer duties in Switzerland?

Each canton applies its own rate, which may sometimes be supplemented by municipal fees or by progressive scales. This diversity creates, for example, significant differences between Geneva, Vaud, Fribourg, Valais, or Bern.

Standard rates for transfer duties

Transfer taxes vary from one canton to another and may change slightly over time. The table below provides an overview of several property transfer taxes applicable in selected German- and French-speaking Swiss cantons, as they were observed at the end of 2025:

As you can see, it is often the cantons of French-speaking Switzerland that display the highest rates when including the municipal share.

Who is liable for the transfer duties?

In the majority of cantons, it is the buyer who is designated as liable for the transfer duty. However, several cantons allow a different distribution of the payment:

• Basel-Landschaft: historically, the transfer duties and the land register registration fees are often shared in equal parts (50/50) between the seller and the buyer, unless otherwise agreed.
  
• Basel-Stadt: the principle is generally the 50/50 sharing of the deed-establishment costs and of the registration duties (which act as transfer duty).

The most widespread arrangement nevertheless remains full payment by the purchaser, except in the case of an exception or a particular local custom.

How to calculate the transfer duties?

Certain cantons introduce nuances depending on the nature of the transaction or the patrimonial situation.

The calculation base: the market value of the property

The amount of the tax on transfer duties is generally based on the purchase price indicated in the deed of sale.

When this price appears too low compared to the market, the administration may rely on the market value, that is, the objective value estimated according to the comparison criteria of the sector. This rule guarantees fiscal fairness and prevents undervaluations intended to artificially reduce the tax.

The specificities according to the cantons

In the majority of cantons, the rate is proportional (fixed, for example 3.0%). However, in cantons like Valais, the rate may be progressive and increase slightly depending on the value of the property.

In cantons like Vaud or Fribourg, the final rate is the sum of a fixed cantonal rate and a municipal surcharge (additional cents), whose percentage varies according to the municipality where the building is located.

The formula for calculating the transfer duties

The basic formula is expressed as follows:

• Amount of the transfer duty = Purchase price × Cantonal rate

This calculation gives you quickly an accurate estimate of the amount to be planned. For example, let us imagine an apartment sold for CHF 800,000 in the canton of Vaud, where the rate is 3.3%:

• Purchase price: CHF 800,000
  
• Rate: 3.3%
  
• Calculation: 800,000 × 0.033 = CHF 26,400

The transfer duties thus amount to CHF 26,400, a sum that is added to the other acquisition costs.

What taxation applies to transfer duties?

The cantonal rules provide several mechanisms of exemption or reduction of the transfer duty. These measures respond to multiple objectives: facilitating family transmission, supporting professional operations, or avoiding fiscal duplication in the case of rapid resales or specific operations.

Exemption in the case of patrimonial transmission

Swiss law grants particular fiscal treatment on transfer duties when real-estate ownership is transferred within a close family. The objective is to facilitate the transmission of patrimony without the tax becoming excessive.

Concretely, if the property passes between parents and children (direct line) or between spouses/registered partners, the transfer duty is in the great majority of cases strongly reduced, or even completely cancelled (exemption). These rules apply both to donations and to successions.

Exemption in the case of real-estate capital gains

Certain Swiss cantons replace the transfer duty with another tax upon sale: the real-estate capital gains tax.

This is for example the case in Geneva, which refrains from collecting the traditional transfer duty when the capital gain of a seller is already taxed. This simplifies taxation and avoids double taxation on the transaction.

This substitution system is often applied in the case of rapid resales or specific transfers between related entities, ensuring that the fiscal component of the transfer is covered by a single tax.

Other cases of exemption

The cantons also provide other cases of exemption or relief, especially when the operation does not resemble a real economic transfer. This concerns:

• land consolidations intended to reorganize parcels;
  
• corporate restructurings when there is no change of the economic beneficiary;
  
• internal legal transformations (merger, demerger, universal transfer of assets);
  
• technical operations without a real transfer of ownership.

The aim is then to avoid hindering transactions that are indispensable to the management of companies, agricultural domains, or development projects.

Ready to find your future property in Switzerland? Now that you master the fiscal implications of a purchase, it is time to move to the concrete step: the search.

Discover the thousands of real-estate listings on dreamo.ch and find the object of your dreams, whether it is an apartment without transfer duties in Zug or a family house in the canton of Vaud!