Toronto’s 2026 Vacant Home Tax Declaration Is Open: Here’s How to Get It Out of the Way.

Toronto’s 2026 Vacant Home Tax declaration is open, and every residential property owner in the city has until Friday, April 30, 2027 to file. The City opened its Vacant Home Tax portal on November 2, and this round covers how your property was used from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

We know. Filling out the same form every year isn’t anyone’s favourite chore, and owners who live in their homes often wonder why they need to bother at all. The short answer is that skipping it can cost far more than the five minutes it takes. That’s why we remind our clients early and encourage them to get it done well before spring.

What’s New, and What Isn’t, for 2026

The rules look a lot like last year’s. The tax is still 3% of your property’s Current Value Assessment, the value set by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), and that rate has held since the 2024 taxation year. The deadline is April 30 again, which gives owners a six-month window to file.

Compliance has also caught up. According to the City, more than 99% of property owners completed their declaration for the 2025 calendar year. The number of homes declared or deemed vacant has been trending down too, from 6,944 in 2022 to 5,989 in 2024, according to a March 2026 City news release.

One thing hasn’t changed: a home you live in all year still needs a declaration. That’s the part that catches people.

Who Has to Declare? (Short Answer: Almost Everyone)

Even If You Live There

Every residential property owner in Toronto has to file, every year, even if the property is their principal residence. Most owners will never pay the tax. The declaration is simply how the City confirms that.

Condo Owners and Anyone With More Than One Property

Condo units are declared individually by their owners, so the building doesn’t do it for you. If you own more than one property, you need a separate declaration for each one, including a rental or a second home.

What Doesn’t Need a Declaration

According to the City’s Vacant Home Tax page, you don’t need to declare a parking space or condo locker, vacant land with no structure on it, or a property assessed fully as multi-residential, commercial or industrial. A brand-new home only needs a declaration once MPAC has added it to the assessment roll.

How to File in About Five Minutes

Start with your property tax bill. You’ll need two numbers from it: your assessment roll number and your customer number. With those in hand, most owners can finish the online declaration in a few minutes.

There are three ways to file. You can submit online through the City’s declaration portal, call 311 (help is available in more than 180 languages), or visit a Tax and Utility Payment Counter at City Hall or any civic centre. If it’s easier, an authorized representative, such as a family member or your lawyer, can file on your behalf.

Once you’re done, keep the proof. Online filers get a confirmation number, plus an email if they provide an address, and phone or in-person filers get a receipt. We suggest saving it with your property tax records. If you ever need to update or correct your declaration, the City’s page explains how.

What It Actually Costs to Miss It

If the City doesn’t receive your declaration by April 30, it assumes the property was vacant and sends you a bill for the full tax. At 3% of assessed value, that’s $21,000 on a condo assessed at $700,000, or $36,000 on a house assessed at $1,200,000. Those numbers apply even if you lived there all year.

You can dispute a bill like that by filing a Notice of Complaint, but it means paperwork, supporting documents and waiting for a decision. Unpaid amounts collect interest of 1.25% a month and are added to the property tax roll. For the 2025 year, bills went out in June 2026, with payments due in three instalments that fall. If you’re sorting out a 2025 bill right now, the deadline to dispute it is December 31, 2026.

You may come across older articles that mention a small late-filing fee. In its 2024 program redesign, the City moved to suspend that fee starting in 2025, and its current page no longer lists one. That doesn’t make missing the deadline cheaper; it just means the real cost is the tax itself. Separately, a false declaration, or not providing information when the City asks, can bring a fine of up to $10,000 on top of the tax.

This isn’t hypothetical. In 2024, many owners didn’t realize they had to declare again, and about 167,000 properties, just over 20% of the city’s residential properties, were deemed vacant, CBC News reported. City staff had estimated that roughly 10,000 homes were actually empty, as The Globe and Mail noted. In other words, most of those owners lived in their homes; they had just missed a form.

The Situations We Get Asked About

Away for the Winter, or Working Abroad

Long stretches away don’t automatically make a home vacant. The test is whether the property was your principal residence, where you receive mail and pay bills, for at least six months of 2026. If it was, you can declare it occupied, even if you spent the winter somewhere warm, worked outside the city or cared for someone elsewhere. You can only have one principal residence, so if your main home is somewhere else, this rule won’t cover a Toronto property you visit occasionally.

Renting It Out

A rented home counts as occupied if the tenant has a written agreement for at least 30 days and the tenancy adds up to at least six months of the year. That matters for owners who rent on shorter terms; our guide to medium-term rentals in Toronto covers how those leases usually work. Family or friends living there rent-free also count, as long as it’s their principal residence for six months or more.

A Pied-à-Terre or Second Home

This is where the tax most often applies. A home used a few nights a month isn’t anyone’s principal residence, so unless it’s rented for six months or qualifies for an exemption, it’s likely taxable. If you’re weighing a pied-à-terre in Toronto, build this cost into your plan from the start. One exception worth knowing: owners whose principal residence is outside the Greater Toronto Area may qualify if they need the unit for full-time work in Toronto or for medical treatment, using the City’s medical treatment certificate form for the latter.

Renovations, Estates and Care

The City offers exemptions when a home sits empty for a good reason. These include major renovations with permits in place, the death of an owner, a principal resident in hospital or long-term care, and court orders that prevent occupancy. Each one still requires a declaration and supporting documents, such as building permits, a death certificate or a letter from the care facility.

Buying or Selling

Timing decides who files. If a sale closed during 2026, either the buyer or the seller can declare, and the transfer of ownership qualifies as an exemption. If you sell after December 31 but before you’ve filed, the seller has to declare, since only they know how the home was used. An undeclared tax becomes a lien on the property, which makes it the buyer’s problem. It’s one more line on our list of hidden costs of buying a home in Toronto, and something your lawyer should confirm before closing day.

Our Advice: Do It Now, Then Forget About It

Every fall, once the portal opens, we send our clients a reminder. It’s a small thing, but the April deadline has a way of arriving during a busy spring, and a five-minute form isn’t worth a five-figure bill. Filing in November means it’s done, confirmed and off your list before the holidays.

Two habits make next year easier. Sign up for the City’s free email reminders on its Vacant Home Tax page, and keep records of how your home was used (leases, utility bills, ID showing your address) for at least three years, since the City can audit past declarations. For more background on how the tax works, see our full Vacant Home Tax guide.

With vacant homes trending down and compliance above 99%, the program appears to be doing what the City intended. Will that be enough to keep the rate at 3% next year? It’s a trend to watch, and we’ll share any changes as they come.

Buying or selling in the next few months and not sure who should file? Get in touch with our team and we’ll walk you through it.