Hamilton property tax calculator
$11,679 a year on $750,000 of assessed value, at 1.5572%. Not one tax — 8 of them on the same assessment, and the assessment is a 1 January 2016 value.
The value on your assessment notice, not the market price. MPAC sets it as at 1 January 2016.
Transit, parkland and infrastructure are still charged separately in each municipality Hamilton absorbed in 2001.
$973 a month · 1.5572% of assessed value
| General levy — provincially shared programs 0.2008% | $1,506 |
| General levy — police 0.2441% | $1,830 |
| General levy — other city services 0.6117% | $4,588 |
| Education 0.153% | $1,148 |
| Fire — full-time service area 0.1518% | $1,139 |
| Transit 0.1679% | $1,259 |
| Parkland 0.0014% | $10 |
| Infrastructure 0.0266% | $199 |
| Total | $11,679 |
8 separate bodies levy on the same assessment here. This is the amount levied, before any rebate, grant or deferral you may be entitled to — those are claimed separately.
What Hamilton charges, line by line
Hamilton's 2026 residential rate is 1.5572% — $11,679 a year on an assessed value of $750,000, or $973 a month. It is not one tax. It is 8 of them on the same assessment:
General levy — provincially shared programs — 0.2008% — $1,506.
General levy — police — 0.2441% — $1,830.
General levy — other city services — 0.6117% — $4,588.
Education — 0.153% — $1,148. Set by the Province of Ontario.
Fire — full-time service area — 0.1518% — $1,139. Hamilton charges fire by service level. The volunteer area pays 0.0375885% and the composite area 0.0706029%; which one applies is set by a map in Schedule 6 of the by-law, not by the former municipality.
Transit — 0.1679% — $1,259.
Parkland — 0.0014% — $10.
Infrastructure — 0.0266% — $199.
Hamilton amalgamated six municipalities in 2001 and still bills transit, parkland and infrastructure separately in each of them. Two identical houses on either side of the old Ancaster boundary pay different tax, and the difference is not small.
And the number it multiplies is a 1 January 2016 value
Hamilton taxes the assessed value set by MPAC as at 1 January 2016. That date does more work than the rate does, and it is the part people get wrong when they check a calculator against their bill.
Ontario's valuation date has not moved since 2016: your 2026 bill runs on what the property would have sold for 10 years ago, in its current state and condition. What you paid for it does not enter into it.
So take the assessed value off your assessment notice, not off a listing site, and the arithmetic above will match your bill to the cent.
When Hamilton actually takes it
4 payments, not one, and they are not evenly spaced. Hamilton bills the year twice: 2 instalments on the interim bill, from February 27, 2026, and 2 on the final, ending September 30, 2026. On $750,000 of assessed value that splits $11,679 into the schedule below.
MPAC sets it as at 1 January 2016.
At zero the instalments are even. Move it and watch where the increase lands: the interim bill is set from last year, so it cannot carry any of it.
On an instalment of $2,920, being 1 month late costs $36.50.
$5,840 on the interim bill, $5,840 on the final.
| Due | Bill | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| February 27, 2026 | Interim bill | $2,920 |
| April 30, 2026 | Interim bill | $2,920 |
| July 2, 2026 | Final bill | $2,920 |
| September 30, 2026 | Final bill | $2,920 |
| Total | $11,679 |
- Twelve-month pre-authorized plan — $973 × 12
- Six equal withdrawals from January to June cover the interim levy, on or after the first or fifteenth of each month. The city does not mail an interim bill to anyone on a monthly plan — it writes in December with the new monthly amount instead.
- Ten-month pre-authorized plan — $1,168 × 10
- Five equal withdrawals from February to June cover the interim levy, on or after the first of each month.
Dates read off City of Hamilton — By-law 25-211 (interim levy, 2026), By-law 26-064 (rates and final instalments, 2026), and Property Tax Due Dates and Penalties on 2026-09-17. Your own bill is the authority for your own property, and a mortgage lender paying on your behalf pays to its own timetable.
Weighted by how much each instalment carries, your money is out of your account on average by June 8 — 09-30 being the day the last of it goes, and January to 27 being months in which Hamilton asks you for nothing at all.
By-law 25-211 was passed on 19 November 2025 and 26-064 on 1 April 2026. Hamilton’s own web page describes the due dates as the last working day of February, April, June and September; the by-law set the first final instalment at 2 July 2026 instead. The by-law is the instrument that fixes the date, so that is the date shown. Both final instalments are also due "21 days after an instalment tax bill is mailed out, whichever is later". Pre-authorized plans are penalty and interest free while the taxpayer keeps to the agreement.
The bill that arrives in February is not about this year
This is the part that makes people think their bill is wrong, and it is worth getting straight before you compare anything.
The 2 instalments due before summer are the interim levy, and the interim levy is calculated from last year's tax bill. It has to be: in February the council has not yet passed the budget that sets this year's rate, so there is no rate to bill you at. Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, c. 25, s. 317 caps it at 50 per cent of what you were billed in total the previous year.
Hamilton puts it in its own by-law: By-law 25-211 levies "a sum not to exceed that which would be produced by applying the prescribed percentage (or 50 percent if no percentage is otherwise prescribed) of the total amounts billed to each property for all purposes in the previous year", under section 317 of the Municipal Act.
Then the final bill arrives with the real rate on it, and the last 2 instalments are whatever is left of the year. Which produces the effect nobody warns you about: a tax increase does not arrive evenly. If Hamilton raises your tax 5 per cent, your instalments up to April 30 are identical to last year's, and the whole increase lands on the 2 payments from July 2 onwards. On a $750,000 assessment your July 2 instalment comes out $278 bigger than your February 27 one — same house, same year, same rate, and the two halves of the year simply are not asking for the same money.
So your July 2 instalment looking worse than your February 27 one is not a mistake and not a surcharge. It is the arithmetic of being billed before the budget exists. The slider in the tool above moves the increase and shows exactly where it falls.
What one late instalment costs in Hamilton
A penalty of 1.25% is charged on the unpaid taxes on the first day of default, and interest of 1.25% per month — 15.00% per year — is added on the first day of each calendar month to all taxes past due. Hamilton is the only city here that names the penalty and the interest as two separate charges.
In money, on the $2,920 instalment above: $36.50 after one month, $218.99 after six. The charge is on the instalment you missed and not on the year's bill, which is the one piece of good news in this section.
Alberta prices it the other way round. Calgary charges 7 per cent of the unpaid amount on 1 July — a single hit, the day after the one deadline it has. At Hamilton's 1.25 per cent a month it would take you about 6 months of lateness to reach the same place. Ontario's instalments are more forgiving of a slip and less forgiving of a habit.
One Hamilton detail worth the space: the city charges a penalty and interest as two separate things — 1.25 per cent on the first day of default, then 1.25 per cent per month, which it states as 15.00 per cent per year. The pre-authorized plans are penalty and interest free for as long as you keep to the agreement, which is the strongest argument for being on one.
In Hamilton, the old municipal boundaries still cost you money
Hamilton amalgamated in 2001. Twenty-five years later its by-law still sets transit, parkland and infrastructure rates separately for each of the six former municipalities, and the 2026 by-law is no exception.
On $750,000 of assessment, cheapest to dearest:
1. Flamborough — $10,502.
2. Stoney Creek — $10,651.
3. Dundas — $10,681.
4. Ancaster — $10,707.
5. Glanbrook — $10,846.
6. Hamilton (old city) — $11,679.
That is $1,177 a year between Flamborough and Hamilton (old city), on the same house, in the same city, under the same council. It is not an anomaly to be corrected — it is deliberate: the old city has full transit service and pays for it, and Flamborough does not and does not.
The calculator above asks which former municipality you are in for exactly this reason. No other tool does, and getting it wrong is worth up to $1,177.
Hamilton is the dearest — and that means less than it sounds
Same $750,000 of assessed value, six cities, 2026 rates:
1. Vancouver — $2,523 at 0.3364%.
2. Calgary — $4,987 at 0.665%.
3. Toronto — $5,755 at 0.7673%.
4. Edmonton — $7,773 at 1.0364%.
5. Mississauga — $8,159 at 1.0879%.
6. Kitchener — $10,545 at 1.406%.
7. Hamilton — $11,679 at 1.5572% ← this page.
Before drawing any conclusion from that order, remember what the rate is: the council's budget divided by everything it can tax. Vancouver is at the top of the cheap end because property there is worth a great deal, not because its council is frugal, and Hamilton is at the bottom for the mirror-image reason.
The comparison that would actually mean something is the tax on the house you would buy in each city, and that is a different sum in each. Change the assessed value in the calculator to yours and the ranking may well reorder.
The same tax year, and five different ideas of when it is due
Rates get compared endlessly and calendars never do, which is odd, because the calendar is the part that touches your bank account. Weighting each instalment by what it carries, here is the average day the money leaves:
1. Kitchener — June 1, across 4 payments.
2. Toronto — June 2, across 6 payments.
3. Mississauga — June 4, across 6 payments.
4. Hamilton — June 8, across 4 payments.
5. Calgary — June 30, across 1 payment.
That is 29 days between Kitchener and Calgary — and it understates the spread, because the pre-authorized plans go further than the ordinary schedule does. The last scheduled withdrawal anywhere in this dataset is December 15, 2026, on Toronto's Pre-Authorized Tax Payment — eleven instalments. A Toronto owner on that plan is still paying 2026 tax 168 days after a Calgary owner has finished with it entirely.
The dividing line is provincial, not municipal. The four Ontario cities here bill twice — an interim levy in February set from last year's bill, a final one in June with the real rate — because Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, c. 25, s. 317 both allows it and caps it. Alberta bills once, later, with the actual number on it. Neither is more generous; they put the uncertainty in different places, and the Ontario arrangement is the one that makes a rate increase arrive as a jump in July rather than as a slightly larger number twelve times.
Your 2026 Ontario tax bill runs on what your house was worth in 2016
Not a typo, and not an approximation. Ontario property tax for 2026 is calculated on the assessed value at 1 January 2016 — 10 years ago. MPAC, the provincial body that values every property in Ontario, has not carried out a province-wide reassessment since 2016.
The 2020 update was postponed for the pandemic, and in August 2023 the province filed a regulation extending the postponement through the end of the 2021–2024 cycle. The postponement has outlived its reason by some margin, and the base has stayed where it was.
Two consequences that matter to you. What you paid for the house is irrelevant — buying in 2023 at 2023 prices does not change your assessment, which is still a 2016 figure. And the freeze is not neutral: neighbourhoods that rose faster than average since 2016 are undertaxed relative to the ones that rose slower, and every year the freeze continues the gap widens. When the reassessment finally lands it will move bills sharply in both directions without any council raising a rate.
So if you are checking an Ontario figure against your bill, use the assessed value on your MPAC notice, not what a realtor says the house is worth. In Alberta and British Columbia the question does not arise: both value at 1 July of the year before the tax year, so a 2026 bill there runs on a July 2025 market value.
Where every rate on this page came from
Municipal rates are not published in one place, because no one body sets them. Each of these was read off the document that approves it, with the date it was read:
City of Toronto — Property tax rates and fees, 2026 Property Tax Rates — read 2026-09-07. https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/property-taxes-utilities/property-tax/property-tax-rates-and-fees/
City of Hamilton — By-law 26-064, To Set and Levy the Rates of Taxation for the Year 2026 — read 2026-09-07. https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/2026-04/26-064.pdf
City of Mississauga — By-law 0061-2026, Schedule A, 2026 Final Tax Rates and Levy — read 2026-09-08. https://www.mississauga.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/01132447/2026-Tax-Ratios-2026-By-law-0061-2026.pdf
City of Kitchener — 2026 Final Tax Rates — read 2026-09-07. https://www.kitchener.ca/media/1itfipd0/2026-rates-remediated.pdf
City of Calgary — Current property tax rates — read 2026-09-07. https://www.calgary.ca/property-owners/taxes/current-rates.html
City of Edmonton — Property tax breakdown, 2026 rates under Bylaw 21442 — read 2026-09-07. https://www.edmonton.ca/residential_neighbourhoods/property_tax_assessment/tax-breakdown
City of Vancouver — Residential property tax rates — read 2026-09-07. https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/residential.aspx
MPAC — The Assessment Cycle (2026 taxes on 1 January 2016 values) — read 2026-09-07. https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/AssessmentCycle
Province of British Columbia — Home owner grant — read 2026-09-07. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/property-taxes/annual-property-tax/home-owner-grant
And what this does not cover:
— Only the cities whose own 2026 rate document could be read are here. Ottawa is the one large Ontario city missing: it publishes a property tax estimator that will give you your own bill, but its 2026 rates appear in none of its published tax policy reports — three of them, 91 pages between them, with not one rate in any. It is not shown rather than shown with a guess.
— Rebates, deferrals and grants are not applied. British Columbia's home owner grant, Ontario's senior and disabled homeowner relief, and Alberta's deferral programmes all reduce what you actually pay, and each has its own application.
— Local improvement charges, business improvement area levies and garbage or water charges appear on the same bill in several of these cities and are not property tax. They are not included here.
— The figure assumes the ordinary residential class. Farm, managed forest, multi-residential and new multi-residential are taxed at different rates in every city on this list.
— British Columbia charges an additional school tax on residential property assessed above $3 million, and it is not applied here.
Where the dates came from
Due dates are set by by-law, one municipality at a time, and a by-law is the only thing that actually fixes them — a city web page describes the usual practice, which is not always what the by-law did. Each of these was read, with the date it was read:
City of Toronto — Property Tax Due Dates, and Late Tax Bill Payments — read 2026-09-17. https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/property-taxes-utilities/property-tax/property-tax-due-dates/
City of Mississauga — By-law 0166-2025 (Collection of interim taxes for the year 2026), and Interim and final tax bills — read 2026-09-17. https://www.mississauga.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/10112500/Tax-Collection-of-Interim-Taxes-2026-By-law-0166-2025.pdf
City of Hamilton — By-law 25-211 (interim levy, 2026), By-law 26-064 (rates and final instalments, 2026), and Property Tax Due Dates and Penalties — read 2026-09-17. https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/2025-11/25-211.pdf
City of Kitchener — Paying your taxes — read 2026-09-17. https://www.kitchener.ca/taxes-utilities-and-finance/property-taxes/paying-your-taxes/
City of Calgary — Property tax payment, and Late payments and penalties (Bylaw 8M2002) — read 2026-09-17. https://www.calgary.ca/property-owners/taxes/payment.html
And the two that could not be read, because "we did not look" and "it does not exist" are different claims and so is "we could not get to it":
Edmonton — edmonton.ca returned HTTP 502 Bad Gateway from every route tried — the property tax pages, the penalties page and both copies of the Tax Penalty, Interest and Monthly Payment Bylaw. The city’s own server, not a block on reading it. Tried 2026-09-17.
Vancouver — vancouver.ca serves a bot-verification interstitial in place of the page. Working around it is not something this site does, so the due dates and penalty rates are not published here. Tried 2026-09-17.
Where to go next
Questions
- What is the property tax rate in Hamilton for 2026?
- 1.5572% on residential property, made up of 8 separate levies: General levy — provincially shared programs at 0.2008%, General levy — police at 0.2441%, General levy — other city services at 0.6117%, Education at 0.153%, Fire — full-time service area at 0.1518%, Transit at 0.1679%, Parkland at 0.0014%, Infrastructure at 0.0266%. On $750,000 of assessed value that is $11,679 a year.
- How much is property tax on a $750,000 house in Hamilton?
- $11,679 a year, $973 a month — provided $750,000 is the assessed value rather than the market price. In Ontario the assessment is a 1 January 2016 value set by MPAC.
- When is Hamilton property assessed?
- At 1 January 2016, and it has not moved since. Ontario's province-wide reassessment was postponed for the pandemic and the postponement extended by regulation, so 2026 taxes run on 2016 values — 10 years old.
- Why do two houses in Hamilton pay different property tax?
- Because Hamilton area-rates transit, parkland and infrastructure by former municipality, twenty-five years after amalgamation. On $750,000 the gap between Flamborough and Hamilton (old city) is $1,177 a year, on identical assessed value.
- When is Hamilton property tax due in 2026?
- In 4 instalments: February 27, 2026, April 30, 2026, July 2, 2026, September 30, 2026. The first 2 are the interim bill, the rest the final bill.
- How many times a year do you pay property tax in Hamilton?
- 4 times on the ordinary schedule, across two bills — an interim one in February and a final one after council passes the budget. The pre-authorized plans offer 12, 10 withdrawals instead.
- Why is my Hamilton interim tax bill different from my final one?
- Because the interim bill is not calculated from this year's rate at all. Under Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, c. 25, s. 317 it is at most 50 per cent of what you were billed last year, sent in February because the council has not yet passed this year's budget. The final bill carries the real rate, so any increase for the year lands entirely on the instalments from July 2 onwards.
- What happens if I pay my Hamilton property tax late?
- A penalty of 1.25% is charged on the unpaid taxes on the first day of default, and interest of 1.25% per month — 15.00% per year — is added on the first day of each calendar month to all taxes past due. Hamilton is the only city here that names the penalty and the interest as two separate charges. On the $2,920 instalment a $750,000 assessment produces, one month late costs $36.50.
- Can I pay Hamilton property tax monthly?
- Yes. Twelve-month pre-authorized plan — Six equal withdrawals from January to June cover the interim levy, on or after the first or fifteenth of each month. The city does not mail an interim bill to anyone on a monthly plan — it writes in December with the new monthly amount instead. Ten-month pre-authorized plan — Five equal withdrawals from February to June cover the interim levy, on or after the first of each month.
- Does this include rebates and grants?
- No. This is the levy before any relief. Rebates and deferrals for seniors, people with a disability and low-income owners exist in all three provinces here, each applied for separately, and British Columbia's home owner grant is claimed every year after the bill is issued.