Tennessee Real Estate Transfer Tax Calculator

Tennessee's transfer tax under Tenn. Code Section 67-4-409 is set at $0.37 per $100 of consideration, 0.37% of the sale price, a flat statewide rate with no county or municipal add-on anywhere in the state. The rate happens to mirror its own per-hundred figure almost exactly, 0.37, a coincidence of statutory drafting rather than any deliberate design.

Tennessee law does not require a specific party to pay the tax; it is customarily handled as a negotiated item in the purchase agreement, and in many Tennessee transactions the buyer pays it at recording, though this varies by local custom and deal terms. At 0.37%, Tennessee's rate matches South Carolina's exactly, despite the two states arriving at that figure through entirely different statutory formulas, and it sits comfortably above the 0.1% flat rate charged by neighboring Alabama and Georgia to the south.

Because the tax is flat with no bracket schedule, county register of deeds offices apply the same 0.37% multiplication to every transaction they record, from a modest rural sale to a large commercial parcel, which keeps the calculation predictable even without a table of thresholds to consult.

Tennessee's realty transfer tax is a flat rate applied to the entire sale price:

$$\text{Transfer Tax} = \text{Sale Price} \times 0.0037$$

The calculator's engine runs this through the calculateStateRealEstateTransferTax primitive with Tennessee's statutory rate of 0.0037 (0.37%) and no local add-on, since Tennessee counties do not layer an additional realty transfer tax on top of the state rate. The primitive returns the tax due, the effective rate (always 0.37% for Tennessee since there is no bracket structure), and net proceeds after subtracting the tax from the sale price.

Because Tennessee has no bracket schedule or value threshold, the calculation shape never changes with price. A $90,000 rural lot and a $9,000,000 commercial building are both taxed at exactly 0.37% of consideration.

Using the calculator's baseline $380,000 sale price:

• Sale Price: $380,000
• Tennessee transfer tax rate: 0.37% ($0.37 per $100 of consideration)
• Transfer Tax Due: $380,000 × 0.0037 = $1,406.00
• Net Proceeds After Tax: $380,000 minus $1,406 = $378,594.00
• Effective Rate: 0.370%

At the higher-value scenario of $1,500,000, the same flat rate applies with no jump to a higher tier: $1,500,000 × 0.0037 = $5,550.00 in tax due. The rate stays fixed at 0.37% whether the sale price is $50,000 or $50,000,000, which makes Tennessee's realty transfer tax straightforward to estimate for any transaction size.

• County recording fees. Tennessee county register of deeds offices charge separate recording fees per page or per document, unrelated to sale price, which this calculator does not include.
• Exemptions for certain transfer types. Transfers between spouses, transfers into certain revocable trusts, and transfers incident to a will or intestate succession may be exempt from the realty transfer tax under Tennessee law. This calculator assumes a standard arm's-length taxable sale.
• Title insurance, attorney fees, and survey costs. The transfer tax is only one line item on a Tennessee closing statement; title search fees, closing attorney charges, and survey costs are separate and not modeled here.
• The Tennessee mortgage recording tax. Tennessee separately imposes a tax on the indebtedness secured by a mortgage or deed of trust recorded alongside the deed, generally $0.115 per $100 above a small exempted amount. This is a distinct tax from the realty transfer tax modeled here and applies to the loan amount, not the sale price.

• Confusing the realty transfer tax with the mortgage recording tax. These are two separate Tennessee taxes with different bases (sale price versus loan amount secured) and different rates. Mixing them up produces an incorrect total at closing.
• Forgetting who customarily pays. In most Tennessee transactions the realty transfer tax is paid by the buyer at recording, though this is ultimately a matter of contract and can be negotiated either way.
• Applying an out-of-state rate by habit. Buyers and agents relocating from bracket-heavy states like New York or New Jersey sometimes assume Tennessee's tax rises with price; it does not.
• Overlooking the tax when estimating cash-to-close. Because 0.37% is a modest percentage, buyers occasionally leave it out of their closing-cost worksheet entirely, then are surprised by the line item on the settlement statement.

• Tennessee Department of Revenue: Realty Transfer Tax guidance under Tenn. Code 67-4-409
• Engine table: engine/tables/2026/state-real-estate-transfer-tax.json, Tennessee entry, verified 2026-08-21