What Iowa’s recording statutes call for, what the transfer tax comes to, and a checker that applies it to one specific deed — so you know what to confirm with the closing attorney and the recorder.
Iowa charges a real estate transfer tax of eighty cents for every five hundred dollars, or part of five hundred dollars, above the first five hundred dollars. On a $250,000 sale that is $399.20. Separately, a deed for an ordinary sale has to arrive at the county recorder with a Declaration of Value signed by a seller, a buyer or an agent for one of them — as do four classes of deed that owe no tax at all, while a long list of other instruments needs none. And since the 2022 amendment, a transaction that owes a groundwater hazard statement but has none of six listed conditions on the property files no statement; a fixed paragraph goes on the first page of the deed in its place.
The rest of this page is the detail. The checker that applies it to one deed is at the end.
Being exempt from Iowa's transfer tax does not mean you are exempt from filing a Declaration of Value. Four of the twenty-two tax exceptions in Iowa Code §428A.2 still require one outright, and part of a fifth does. And since the 2022 amendment, a transaction that would otherwise file a Groundwater Hazard Statement on a clean property files none; prescribed language goes on the first page of the deed in its place. Get either wrong and the recorder refuses the document.
The requirement is in the same section that imposes the tax, and it is written as a default with a list of carve-outs rather than as a list of transactions that need one.
“When each deed, instrument, or writing by which any real property in this state is granted, assigned, transferred, or otherwise conveyed is presented for recording to the county recorder, a declaration of value signed by at least one of the sellers or one of the buyers or their agents shall be submitted to the county recorder.” Iowa Code §428A.1(2)
No Declaration of Value is required for the instruments described in §428A.2 subsections 2 through 5, 7 through 13 and 16 through 21; nor for subsection 6, the cases where a unit of government is the grantor, assignor, transferor or conveyor, or is the grantee or assignee without consideration — except where the government party is a federal agency or instrumentality, or where the transfer results from acquiring land for public purposes by contract or condemnation under the power of eminent domain. Read the subsections themselves for what each covers; §428A.2 is linked below and runs to two pages. The ranges are what the filing decision turns on.
One condition on using a carve-out that neither the statute’s exemption list nor the ranges make obvious: the Department of Revenue’s rule treats the exemption as available only “if the document presented for recording clearly states on its face that it is a document exempt from the reporting requirements” (IAC 701—109.5(1)), which lines up with §428A.4(1) requiring a signed statement, filed with or endorsed on the instrument, that it is excepted from the tax. An instrument that is genuinely exempt and silent about it is an instrument the recorder can refuse.
Four of the twenty-two, plus the two government cases above. Subsections 1 (executory contracts for the sale of land and their assignments or cancellations), 14 (instruments from a corporate or LLC merger, consolidation or reorganization that say so on their face), 15 (deeds between a family entity and its owners for shares or debt securities only) and 22 (trust distributions to a beneficiary without consideration) are all outside the carve-out ranges. They owe no transfer tax and still need a Declaration of Value, and so does subsection 6 in the two cases above. That gap is an easy one to miss, because those instruments look exempt from the outside.
“A declaration of value shall not be required with a deed given in fulfillment of a recorded real estate contract provided the deed has a notation that it is given in fulfillment of a contract.” Iowa Code §428A.4(2)
The exemption is conditional on the notation. A fulfillment deed that does not carry it is a deed that needs a Declaration of Value.
This is the part that stops closings, and it is in the Department of Revenue’s rules rather than in the Code. The recorder shall refuse to record any document for which a declaration of value is required if the form “is not completed accurately and completely by the buyer or seller or the agent of either”, and the declaration has to include the social security number or federal identification number of both the buyer and the seller, plus whatever else the director of revenue requires (IAC 701—109.5(5)).
There is a documented route when the other side will not give you theirs. If the person completing the declaration, or their agent, has made a good-faith effort and still cannot obtain the other party’s number for reasons outside their control, a signed affidavit stating that the effort was made and why the number could not be obtained is submitted with the incomplete declaration; the rule treats that as sufficient compliance with §428A.1, and the affidavit becomes part of the declaration (IAC 701—109.5(5)). Worth knowing before a file sits waiting on a number that is not coming.
Three more from the same rule chapter. “Agent”, for signing purposes, is any person designated or approved by the buyer or seller to act on their behalf in the transfer (IAC 701—109.5(3)). Where parcels sit in more than one county, the consideration paid for each property has to be separately stated on the declaration or the recorder refuses the instrument (IAC 701—109.5(6)). And a completed declaration is a public record under Iowa Code chapter 22, with the social security or federal identification numbers redacted before release (IAC 701—109.6) — so the consideration figure on it is public, which is also why it is the figure that turns up later in assessment data. If agricultural land as defined in §9H.1 is bought by a corporation, limited partnership, trust, alien or nonresident alien, the declaration additionally names and addresses both parties and legally describes the land, and the part identifying that buyer goes to the secretary of state (§428A.1(3)).
“When there is consideration and the actual market value of the real property transferred is in excess of five hundred dollars, the tax is eighty cents for each five hundred dollars or fractional part of five hundred dollars in excess of five hundred dollars.” Iowa Code §428A.1(1)(a)(2)
Two things in that sentence do the work. The first five hundred dollars is excluded, and anything over a five-hundred-dollar boundary is charged as a whole five hundred — a “fractional part” rounds up, never down.
Note which figure the chapter measures. The sentence above is written against the actual market value of the property transferred, while §428A.4(1) has the recorder refuse a deed whose tax was not paid “on the full amount of the consideration in the transaction”, and §428A.1(1)(b) defines consideration as the full actual sale price including any encumbrance or lien the grantee assumes. The table below assumes the two are the same, which in an arm’s-length sale they generally are. Where they diverge — a bargain sale, or the §428A.2(13) proviso taxing a partition share greater in value than the undivided interest — the figure here is not the answer and the recorder’s is.
If you have seen the rate written as $1.60 per thousand with the first $500 exempt, that reaches the same figure, but only once the price has been rounded up to the next $500 first. Without that step it under-reports, by up to 79.84 cents: $262,750 is $420.00 by the statute and $419.60 if you divide straight through, and $1,001 is $1.60 against $0.80. The statutory round-up governs.
| Total amount paid | Transfer tax |
|---|---|
| $500 or less | $0 |
| $1,000 | $0.80 |
| $50,000 | $79.20 |
| $100,000 | $159.20 |
| $150,000 | $239.20 |
| $200,000 | $319.20 |
| $250,000 | $399.20 |
| $300,000 | $479.20 |
| $400,000 | $639.20 |
| $500,000 | $799.20 |
A sale at five hundred dollars or less is also a listed exception to the tax in its own right, at §428A.2(21), which is why it needs no Declaration of Value either.
Sale price $262,750. Subtract the exempt $500 to get $262,250. Divide by 500 and you get 524.5, and the half is a fractional part of five hundred dollars, so it counts as a whole one: 525 increments. 525 × $0.80 = $420.00. The per-thousand phrasing gets there too — round $262,750 up to the next $500, which is $263,000, take off the exempt $500 to get $262,500, and $262,500 ÷ 1,000 × $1.60 is $420.00.
§428A.1(1)(c) presumes the price includes every bit of personal property that went with the sale unless the dollar value of that personal property is stated on the instrument of conveyance. State it and it comes off the figure the tax is computed on; leave it off and it does not.
| Value stated on the deed: tax on $260,000 | $415.20 |
|---|---|
| Not stated: tax on $265,000 | $423.20 |
| Cost of the omission | $8.00 |
Eight dollars is not the point. The point is that it is the deed, not the purchase agreement, that has to carry the number, and that is a drafting instruction somebody has to give before closing.
The statement rides on the Declaration of Value, not on the deed. §558.69(1) attaches it to “each declaration of value submitted to the county recorder under chapter 428A”, except in the case subsection 8 carves out. Two things follow, and the second is the one that gets missed. A transaction that needs no declaration of value owes no groundwater hazard statement under §558.69 — though the DNR’s own rule is careful to add “or when otherwise required by Iowa law” (IAC 561—9.1(4)), so that is not a finding of general exemption. And because the subsection 8 paragraph operates in lieu of a statement, it is the substitute for an obligation that has to exist first: it belongs on a deed whose transaction owes a statement but has a clean property, not on every deed. Where an instrument transfers title with no declaration of value at all, confirm with the county recorder before filing — recording desks differ on those, and the cost of asking is a phone call.
A known private burial site, known wells, a known solid waste disposal site the Department of Natural Resources has deemed potentially hazardous, a known underground storage tank, known hazardous waste, and a known private sewage disposal system. Each carries its own follow-up — a location, a status under another section, a tank’s type and contents, whether waste is being managed under DNR rules, whether a septic system has been inspected. The six checkboxes in the checker below name them with their paragraph cites (§558.69(1)(a) to (f)).
§558.69(8)(a) is written as a prohibition, not a permission: where no subsection 1 condition is present, a groundwater hazard statement shall not be submitted, and in lieu of submitting one the deed, instrument or writing “shall include on the first page” a statement the subsection then sets out in full.
Put exactly this on the first page of the deed, as prescribed wording rather than a gist:
There is no known private burial site, well, solid waste disposal site, underground storage tank, hazardous waste, or private sewage disposal system on the property as described in Iowa Code section 558.69, and therefore the transaction is exempt from the requirement to submit a groundwater hazard statement.That has been the rule since the 2022 amendment (2022 Iowa Acts ch 1028, §§1–4, per the section’s own history note). It is not optional in either direction: §558.69(9)(a) has the recorder refuse the deed if a required declaration arrives without a statement that was required, and equally if the deed does not carry the subsection 8 paragraph where that paragraph was required. A document already recorded in violation is not invalidated by the failure (§558.69(9)(b)).
The DNR prescribes the form under §558.69(5), and its rules adopt Form 542-0960, “Groundwater Hazard Statement” (February 1, 2023) by reference. For transactions dated after 1 February 2023 county recorders are directed to accept only the currently adopted form, though anyone may photocopy or electronically reproduce it so long as the general format and wording are unaltered. The transferor, or the transferor’s agent or attorney, completes and presents it.
Under §558.69(7) the owner is responsible for the accuracy of what is on the statement, and the owner’s agent and the preparer are not liable for the accuracy of information the owner provided — unless they have direct knowledge contrary to what was submitted. Read the rest of that subsection before relying on it: it says in terms that its provisions do not limit liability which may be imposed under a contract or under any other law. It is a narrow allocation of one statutory duty, not a general clearance.
Subsection 8 allocates the deed paragraph separately and in slightly different words. The owner is responsible for the accuracy of the paragraph (§558.69(8)(b)), and the owner’s agent and the preparer are not liable “for information pertaining to the statement” unless they have direct knowledge contrary to the included statement (§558.69(8)(c)) — and subsection 8 carries no contract-or-other-law clause of its own either way.
The DNR rule adds a condition for agents who sign the form: an agent or attorney may sign on the transferor’s behalf, but in doing so represents that the transferor made a good-faith effort to accurately provide the information the form asks for (IAC 561—9.2(1)(a)). Signing for a seller who has not actually been asked the six questions is therefore its own exposure, separate from whether any answer turns out to be wrong.
The recorder cannot charge a fee for submitting or filing a groundwater hazard statement (§558.69(10)), notwithstanding the general recording-fee statute. The seller has to give the buyer a copy of the submitted statement (§558.69(3)), and the recorder presents or returns it with the recorded instrument when that instrument goes back to the transferee or the transferee’s designee (IAC 561—9.2(3)). And nothing in the DNR’s rules requires anyone to send the department the first page of a no-conditions deed (IAC 561—9.2(5)).
One note on dates, because guidance on this subject ages badly. The DNR’s rule chapter was refiled effective 27 August 2025 (ARC 9435C), and the rule now in force says a statement is presented to the recorder “only when required by Iowa Code section 558.69 or when otherwise required by Iowa law” (IAC 561—9.1(4)). Check the date on anything else you read about this, including this page.
For an ordinary residential sale on a clean parcel, the recorder’s packet is two things, not three: the deed, carrying the §558.69(8)(a) paragraph on its first page, and the Declaration of Value, with the transfer tax paid. There is no groundwater hazard statement in that file at all, and no third document to chase — which is exactly why the habit of chasing one survives: the task moved into the deed drafting and out of the closing checklist, so the person who used to collect a signature now has to have told the drafter something, earlier.
The two failures worth building a reminder around are both upstream of the recorder. One, the personal-property figure has to be on the deed to count, so it has to be settled before the deed is drafted rather than at the table. Two, a tax-exempt deed is not automatically a declaration-exempt deed, and the four subsections that fall in that gap — 1, 14, 15 and 22 — are exactly the ones that look most exempt from the outside: a contract assignment, a reorganization, a family-entity transfer, a trust distribution.
This tool is a practical planning aid for real estate professionals and their clients. It is not legal, tax or title advice. It reads the Iowa Code as published in the 2026 edition: the real estate transfer tax and Declaration of Value at Iowa Code chapter 428A, and the groundwater hazard statement at Iowa Code section 558.69, together with the Department of Natural Resources rules at Iowa Administrative Code 561 chapter 9 and the Department of Revenue rules at Iowa Administrative Code 701 chapter 109. County recorders apply their own submission procedures, some transactions raise facts this tool does not ask about, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources prescribes the form of the groundwater hazard statement under §558.69(5). Confirm every filing with the closing attorney, title company and county recorder handling your transaction. © 2026 Real Deal Pro. Built in Iowa for Iowa agents and their clients.