Moving from Toronto to Orlando: Taxes, Simulation Tech, and Central Florida

Orlando doesn’t run on the same pipeline as South Florida. The Toronto-to-Miami file is usually a condo, a snowbird testing out permanent residency, or a finance transfer. The Toronto-to-Orlando file is younger and already has an offer letter: Lockheed Martin’s simulation and training division, EA Tiburon, L3Harris, Siemens Energy’s US headquarters, or one of the corporate campuses Disney and Universal run well outside the parks. The tax mechanics underneath are the same Ontario departure every corridor shares, a deemed disposition on the way out and a rate drop on the way in, but the household doing the moving looks like a UCF Research Park engineer, not a retiree.

What happens to your tax bill when you leave for Orlando?

Two systems, not one blended rate. Once you’ve genuinely ceased Canadian residence, Ontario and federal Canadian income tax stop applying going forward, and Florida has no state income tax to pick up where they left off, so your ongoing return is US federal only. On the way out, Canada still treats you as having sold most of what you own at fair market value on your departure date, and that deemed disposition lands on your final Canadian T1 and T1243 regardless of which Orlando employer signed you.

• The departure tax bill is the piece people underweight because the going-forward savings are so visible. Full mechanics and exclusions are in Form T1161 and T1243 and the leaving-Canada checklist.

How much of Toronto’s 53.53% top rate actually disappears?

All of it, on the state side, and permanently rather than temporarily. Ontario’s combined federal and provincial top rate, including the 20% and 36% surtax add-ons layered onto Ontario’s basic tax, runs near 53.53% above the top threshold. Florida has no equivalent bracket, no surtax, and no Ontario Health Premium, and the Health Premium itself stops accruing in the calendar year after you leave.

	Toronto / Ontario	Orlando / Florida
State or provincial income tax	Yes, combined with federal to roughly 53.53% at the top	None
County or city income tax	None (Ontario has no municipal income tax)	None (no Florida county levies income tax)
Sales tax	HST 13%	Roughly 6.5% in Orange County (6% state plus 0.5% county surtax)
Land transfer tax	Provincial LTT plus Toronto’s municipal LTT, roughly doubling the cost	Documentary stamp tax on deeds at closing, no ongoing LTT
Property tax	Toronto property tax, no cap on annual increases	Roughly 0.9% to 1.1% effective, homestead exemption plus a 3% Save Our Homes cap
Estate tax on death	Ontario Estate Administration Tax, roughly 1.5% above the first tier	No Florida estate tax; US federal estate tax applies above the exemption

Who is actually relocating to Orlando for work?

Working professionals with a specific employer already lined up, not retirees drawn by the parks. Central Florida’s economy runs on a simulation and training industry anchored by Lockheed Martin’s Orlando divisions, L3Harris’s sensors and space work in the Orlando and Melbourne corridor, and the modeling-and-simulation cluster built around UCF Research Park. Electronic Arts runs its Tiburon studio in Maitland, Siemens Energy runs its US headquarters out of Orlando, and Disney and Universal both carry large corporate, IT, and finance headcounts that never touch a park gate.

• AdventHealth and Orlando Health add a deep healthcare employer base, and Deloitte, KPMG, and other professional services firms run sizable Orlando offices, so the corridor pulls beyond tech and defense into accounting, consulting, and clinical roles as well.

What happens to your RRSP and TFSA in Florida?

Cleaner than almost any other US destination, because there’s no state return to complicate either account. An RRSP stays tax-deferred under the US-Canada treaty and carries no state addback in Florida, since there’s no state income tax return to file at all, only the federal one. A TFSA is different: the US doesn’t recognize its tax-free status, treats it as a foreign trust, and generally should be collapsed before you leave Canada rather than carried across the border.

• The RRSP and TFSA rules that apply regardless of destination state are in RRSP and TFSA after moving to the US.

How much lower is Orange County’s sales tax?

About half the HST rate, and it’s the easiest number to explain to anyone still thinking in Toronto terms. Orange County’s combined sales tax runs approximately 6.5%, the 6% Florida state rate plus a 0.5% county surtax, lower than Hillsborough County’s roughly 7.5% and close to Miami-Dade’s roughly 7%. There’s no county-level income tax anywhere in Florida to offset that gap, which is the bigger structural point for anyone comparing Orlando to Toronto rather than to another Florida county.

• The full state-versus-province mechanics, including how sales tax interacts with the rest of the rate comparison, are in state income tax across the Canada-US border.

How do the homestead exemption and Save Our Homes work?

Two separate mechanisms, and the gap between them in year one is the detail most new arrivals miss. If you own the home and it’s genuinely your permanent residence as of January 1, you file Form DR-501 with the Orange County property appraiser by March 1 and get up to $50,000 off assessed value. Save Our Homes is a second, later benefit: once you’ve had one exempt year on the roll, annual increases in assessed value are capped at the lesser of 3% or the change in CPI.

Orlando, Tampa, or Miami: where do professionals land?

Depends entirely on the employer, and the three corridors don’t overlap much. Orlando and its UCF Research Park corridor pull simulation, defense, and gaming talent for Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, and EA Tiburon, plus corporate and healthcare roles at Disney, Universal, AdventHealth, and Orlando Health. Tampa’s pipeline runs through Raymond James, ConnectWise, and the MacDill contractor base, finance and cybersecurity rather than simulation. Miami stays the condo-and-finance corridor pulling snowbirds converting to permanent residency and international finance transplants.

• None of that changes the tax analysis, since Orange, Hillsborough, and Miami-Dade counties all sit inside the same zero-income-tax state. It only changes who’s actually making the move and how fast they need the paperwork done.

What happens to OHIP and the Toronto house?

OHIP coverage doesn’t end the day you land in Orlando. Ontario applies a residency-based test built around roughly 212 days of annual presence, and a genuine permanent departure typically carries a three-month tail of continued coverage after you notify the ministry, after which Florida or employer-provided health coverage needs to be in place. The Toronto house keeps its principal residence exemption up to the departure date if it was genuinely your home, though the exempt fraction stops growing the day Canadian residence ends.

• Ontario’s land transfer tax, doubled by Toronto’s municipal top-up, is a buyer’s tax and has no bearing on the sale side of your move. The provincial health insurance guide covers the OHIP wind-down timeline in full.

Is there an estate tax bill waiting in Florida?

Not from Florida itself, but from the US federal system above it. Florida charges no state estate tax, so there’s no Florida-level equivalent to Ontario’s Estate Administration Tax, which runs roughly 1.5% of estate value above the first tier and applies to everything passing through Ontario probate. The number that actually matters once you’re a US resident is the federal estate tax exemption, and the exposure looks very different for a non-resident alien than for someone who has become a US person.

• The exemption thresholds and how residency status changes them are in the US estate tax and the $60,000 exemption.

What should you do before you sign anything?

Fix the departure date against the Lockheed, L3Harris, EA, or Siemens Energy start date first, because an employer’s fixed start date is usually the least flexible piece of the whole move. The departure date decides which Canadian tax year absorbs the deemed disposition and whether Ontario still has a claim on that year, while the start date drives the closing timeline, the homestead filing, and the first US paycheck’s withholding.

• Once both dates are set, the homestead deadline, the RRSP and TFSA handling, and the choice of neighborhood inside the UCF Research Park, Lake Nona, or Winter Park corridor become the easier decisions they look like from the outside.

• Moving from Ontario to Florida, the province-level version of this corridor

• Moving from Canada to Florida, the generic corridor from any province

• Toronto to Miami, the South Florida version of this same move

• Toronto to Tampa, the Tampa Bay version of this same move

• Toronto to Austin, another zero-state-tax destination

• Toronto to Nashville, another zero-state-tax destination

• Canada’s departure tax, T1161 and T1243

• Leaving Canada permanently: tax checklist

• RRSP and TFSA after moving to the US

• The US-Canada tax treaty explained

• Your first US tax return as a new Canadian immigrant

• State income tax across the Canada-US border

• Provincial health insurance when leaving Canada

• The US estate tax and the $60,000 exemption

• Montreal to Orlando, the same destination from Quebec

• Vancouver to Orlando, the same destination from BC

• Calgary to Orlando, the same destination from Alberta

• Ottawa to Orlando, the defence simulation corridor from Ottawa

This guide is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Which points apply, and how, depends on your facts.