Yukon never wrote a word of relief for a riba-free purchase and gave it something no other jurisdiction read in this corpus has given it: its own instrument.

Every jurisdiction read in this corpus is asked one question. A riba-free purchase usually puts the financier on the register for a moment on its way to the household, because someone other than the buyer has to own the house before it can be sold or leased to the buyer. Does the state charge for that extra step, and if it relieves it, what does it ask before relieving it? The answers have sorted into kinds. Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory wrote express provision and asked who the financier was. Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and South Australia wrote nothing. Ontario built anti-double-taxation machinery and asked for a debt and a creditor. British Columbia built a once-only rule around the agreement for sale. Quebec and Manitoba put the relief inside a definition. Alberta asked whether interest was payable. Saskatchewan wrote no relief and kept the price outside the statute book. Prince Edward Island named only the conventional mortgagee, and only after default. Nova Scotia taxed the same deed twice from two levels of government. Newfoundland and Labrador charged no tax and turned out to be the dearest place read here. New Brunswick's register already had a form for a lease with an option to buy. The Northwest Territories charged the dearer instrument twice and the cheaper one never, and was the first place where that penalty stopped growing with the price.

Yukon is the twelfth Canadian jurisdiction read here below the federal level and the second of Canada's three territories. It answers the question in a way no jurisdiction read anywhere in this corpus has answered it before, and the answer is not in an exemption, because Yukon wrote none. It is in the two things the Territory did instead: it gave a security that is not a loan its own named, registrable place in the statute, and then priced that security in exactly the same column as a mortgage.

WHAT WAS READ. The Land Titles Act, 2015, SY 2015, c 10, in the unofficial consolidation of the Yukon Legislative Counsel Office, read whole - 132 pages, the amendment table carried to SY 2024, c 9; the Land Titles Tariff of Fees Regulation, O.I.C. 2016/110, in force 20 June 2016 and consolidated to O.I.C. 2021/92, read whole including all fifty-five rows of its Schedule; and, for the commencement and repeal provisions alone, the Act as assented to on 19 November 2015 in the Queen's Printer's annual volume. Four limits belong at the front rather than in a footnote. First, the publisher's own currency stamp is an unfilled template: the consolidation says it "includes any amendments to the Act that are in force and is current to: currency date", in both languages, so a reader cannot tell from the document how current it is. Second, section 217 leaves commencement to an order of the Commissioner in Executive Council and that order was not found; what is on the record instead is that the tariff was made "Pursuant to section 212 of the Land Titles Act, 2015" and came into force on 20 June 2016. Third, Yukon's regulation index is a script-driven page and the archive holds only a scattering of the subordinate-legislation tree, so the tariff is the only regulation under this Act that could be located, and the negative findings below are bounded in the way Saskatchewan's were rather than exhaustive in the way Alberta's and Quebec's were. Fourth, nothing was read in French although the French text is equally authoritative, no registrar's directive or Yukon decision was read, and the rest of the Yukon statute book was not read - so this entry does not say that Yukon has no transfer tax. It says only what it read: this Act and this tariff impose fees, and the tariff is what a purchase pays at the land titles office.

THE FIRST FINDING IS A SECOND DOOR IN THE REGISTER. Section 122 sets out two ways to charge a house, in two consecutive subsections. Subsection (1) is the familiar one: to charge land "with a mortgage in favour of a mortgagee", the owner executes a mortgage in the prescribed form. Subsection (2) is the one no other statute read here contains. To make land "security for the payment of an annuity, rent charge or sum of money in favour of an encumbrance holder", the owner executes not a mortgage but a "financial encumbrance" in the prescribed form. The Act defines the two apart. "mortgage" means a charge on land created merely for securing a debt or loan. "financial encumbrance" means a financial encumbrance under Part 5, Division 5 - which is to say, the thing section 122 (2) creates, defined by what it secures rather than by whether anyone lent anything. The word "loan" appears exactly once in the whole 132-page Act, and it is inside the definition of mortgage. Section 135 repeats the pair one level down, for a lessee charging a leasehold interest.

THE SECOND FINDING IS THAT THE PRICE LIST DOES NOT CARE WHICH ONE IT IS. Row 12 of the Schedule is headed "Register a mortgage or financial encumbrance:" and then bands a single rate ladder by value - fifty dollars below one hundred thousand, one hundred to five hundred thousand, two hundred to a million, four hundred to five million, six hundred to ten million, eight hundred to twenty million, and one thousand dollars above that. There is one ladder, not two. The Act's discharge, transfer, enforcement and amendment provisions name the pair together in the same breath, and rows 13, 14 and 33 of the tariff price an amendment, a transfer and a discharge without distinguishing them either. In the whole tariff the words "interest", "debt", "loan", "lender" and "borrower" appear zero times. Every other jurisdiction read here used the presence or absence of a loan to decide something: Ontario, Prince Edward Island, New South Wales and South Australia used it to shut riba-free arrangements out of relief, and the Northwest Territories used it, once, to shut them out of a charge. Yukon is the first place read anywhere in this corpus where the distinction exists in the statute, is named on the register, and makes no difference at all to the bill.

THAT HAS A CONSEQUENCE WORTH STATING PLAINLY. Where a riba-free arrangement can be built with the household on the certificate of title and the financier holding a registered security over it - a partnership in which the household owns and the institution's entitlement to its share of the price is secured, rather than one in which the institution owns first - Yukon charges it exactly what it charges an interest-bearing mortgage over the same house. Not less, which would be relief. Not more, which is what every registration-fee jurisdiction read before this one did to the household that could not use a mortgage. The same. Whether a particular obligation - a deferred sale price, a rent, a purchase undertaking - is a "debt" within the definition of mortgage or a "sum of money" within section 122 (2) is a question this Act does not settle and this entry does not pretend to settle. The point is that in Yukon the answer does not change the price.

WHERE THE FINANCIER MUST TAKE TITLE, THE ARITHMETIC IS NEW TOO. Row 3 charges an application to register a transfer and issue a certificate of title in five bands by declared value: "(a) where the declared value of the 50.00 land being transferred is less than $100,000" - that is how a banded row reads on the page, with the amount at the end of the row's first line - then one hundred and fifty dollars to five hundred thousand, three hundred and fifty to three million, five hundred and fifty to ten million, and seven hundred and fifty dollars above that, in every case "Plus assurance fund fee". Both ladders stop. The transfer ladder stops at $750 and the security ladder at $1,000. So the extra cost of moving the land twice instead of once, in a jurisdiction with no relief of any kind, is the difference between two capped step functions - and it is the first time in this corpus that the penalty on a riba-free purchase has an absolute ceiling in dollars rather than a merely bounded gap. Whatever the house costs, whatever is financed, the arithmetic below cannot exceed $724.

THE WORKED FIGURES, AND THEY ARE DERIVED, NOT QUOTED. Set the two structures side by side. Both register one transfer from the vendor at the purchase price, and both pay the assurance fund fee on it. The conventional purchase then registers a mortgage or financial encumbrance at row 12 and later a discharge of mortgage at row 33, five dollars. The riba-free purchase instead registers a caveat to protect the household's interest - row 21, six dollars - then a second transfer at row 3 with its own assurance fund fee, then a withdrawal of caveat, row 32, three dollars. Everything except the two ladders cancels or is small, and what is left is a constant: six plus three plus a twenty-dollar assurance fund fee, less the five dollars of mortgage discharge the riba-free household never pays. Twenty-four dollars. The whole extra cost is the second transfer's band, plus twenty-four dollars, minus whatever the conventional household would have paid to register its mortgage. On a $90,000 cabin financed at $72,000 that is twenty-four dollars. On a $250,000 house financed at $200,000, seventy-four. On a $600,000 house at eighty per cent, two hundred and seventy-four dollars - the worst ordinary case. Push the financing to ninety per cent of that same $600,000 house and it falls to one hundred and seventy-four, because the mortgage ladder steps up and the transfer ladder does not.

AND THEN THE SIGN CHANGES. Because the security ladder climbs higher than the transfer ladder, there are prices at which the riba-free structure is CHEAPER to register than the conventional one. At a secured amount of one million dollars against a house under three million, the mortgage band steps from two hundred to four hundred dollars while the transfer band does not move at all, and the extra cost falls from a hundred and seventy-four dollars to minus twenty-six: the household that cannot use a mortgage pays the land titles office twenty-six dollars less than the household that can. The same twenty-six-dollar saving appears again above five million and again above ten million, and at a secured amount of twenty million or more it becomes a saving of two hundred and twenty-six dollars. This is arithmetic and not policy. Nobody in Yukon legislated a preference for anything; two officials set two ladders in one order in council and the ladders cross. A Commissioner in Executive Council can amend either of them tomorrow and the crossing disappears.

THE ENTRY MUST REFUSE THREE OVER-CLAIMS HERE, and the gate on this record asserts their absence. This is not relief: Yukon wrote no exemption for a riba-free purchase, no once-only rule for a transfer, and no power anywhere in the Act or the tariff to waive, reduce or remit a fee. The word "exempt" does not appear in the Act at all, and "exemption" appears four times, every one of them the heading or table entry of section 13, "Exemption from attendance and production", which is about a registrar not being dragged into court. The tariff does set four rows at $0.00 - bringing land under the Act, bringing settlement land under the Act and issuing an original certificate of title to an eligible First Nation, a transfer by the Government of Canada or the Government of Yukon, and withdrawing land from under the Act - so Yukon does know how to charge nobody. It has never done it for a household. Nor is this a story about a cheap jurisdiction: the ceiling is on the COMPARISON, and a $750 transfer fee is still paid twice by anyone who has to move the land twice.

THERE IS ALSO SOMETHING CLOSE TO A ONCE-ONLY RULE, AND IT IS ALSO ARITHMETIC. Section 1 (2) of the tariff prices the assurance fund fee at "$20.00 for all applicable transactions up to $10,000 plus $10.00 for each $10,000, or portion thereof, of additional declared value since the last transfer." The escalating part of that fee is charged on the INCREASE in declared value since the land last moved, not on the value of the transfer. On the second leg of a riba-free purchase, where the financier passes to the household the house it bought moments earlier at the same declared value, there is no additional declared value, and the fee for that leg is the twenty-dollar base. Ontario headed a section "Tax only paid once" and then required a debt and a creditor before it would apply. Yukon never wrote such a rule and gets much of its effect from a formula that does not care why the land moved. What this entry cannot tell you is how a registrar actually applies "additional declared value since the last transfer" when two transfers are legs of one financing arrangement: no directive, bulletin or decision on that phrase was read, and a registrar could take a different view. It is stated here as what the words say, and it is the one place in this record where a provision is read onto facts it does not name.

THE REGISTER ALSO HOLDS THE LEASE-TO-OWN SHAPE, AND HOLDS IT SUBSTANTIVELY. New Brunswick, the last province read, was the first jurisdiction anywhere in this corpus whose register had a named place for a lease with a right to buy - the words "and option" beside "lease" in a heading, and a numbered form. Yukon goes past a heading to an obligation. Section 109 is called "Right to purchase". Subsection (1): "A lease registered under this Act may include the right of the lessee to purchase the land described in the lease." Subsection (2): "The lessor must execute a transfer of land to the lessee and perform all necessary acts required by this Act for the purpose of transferring the land to the lessee" if the lessee "pays the purchase price for the land as set out in the lease" and observes the other promises in it. That is the shape of a lease ending in ownership, written into a land titles statute as a duty on the owner, in a jurisdiction that never says Islam, Islamic, Muslim, Shariah, riba, murabaha, ijara or musharaka - all of which are zero in both instruments. Registering that lease costs five dollars at row 18; a certificate of leasehold title costs ten at row 7.

ONE DOOR IS SHUT, AND SHUT THE SAME WAY NEW SOUTH WALES SHUT ITS OWN. Section 112.01, added in 2024, creates a "statutory covenant" that runs with the land and can carry exactly the machinery a diminishing partnership needs: paragraph (5) (d) lets it fix "the price at which an interest in the land, including a condominium unit, may be transferred by the owner of the land to another person, including provisions setting out a formula or method to determine, at a particular time, the maximum price at which the interest in the land may be transferred", and paragraph (5) (f) lets it deal with "respecting the covenantee having a first option to purchase the interest in the land, including a condominium unit". A buy-out schedule and an option to buy, registrable and enforceable against successors in title. Then subsection (2) closes it: the covenant must be "in favour of and enforceable by the Government of Yukon as covenantee". New South Wales built the closest thing to a diminishing partnership in any statute in this corpus and shut the door by naming who the other owner could be. Yukon built the closest thing to a registrable buy-out formula and shut it the same way.

ON THE REGISTER ITSELF, YUKON IS GENTLER THAN ITS NEIGHBOUR AND STILL NOT GENEROUS. Section 30 (1) says the registrar "must not record on a certificate of title any notice of a trust, whether expressed, implied or constructive, except to note that the owner named on the certificate of title is a trustee", and section 30 (3) says the registrar "must treat any instrument containing any notice of a trust as if there were no trust, and the trustee or trustees named in the instrument are deemed to be the absolute and beneficial owners of the land for the purposes of this Act." The Northwest Territories allowed that note only for four named kinds of person; Yukon allows it for anyone, but allows only the bare fact. A household whose financier holds legal title can have the register say that the owner is a trustee. It cannot have the register say who the beneficiary is, and section 176 (1) (a) puts a breach of trust by the owner outside what the assurance fund will pay for. Its real protection is the six-dollar caveat, which section 136 (a) permits for an interest "under an unregistered instrument that cannot be immediately registered".

RELIGION APPEARS ONCE, AND IN THE PLACE IT HAS APPEARED EVERY OTHER TIME. Section 171 provides that "Trustees who hold land for the purposes of a religious entity or congregation are to be treated as a body corporate with regard to the land and any dealings with it", and that for registered dealings they are considered the absolute and beneficial owner. It is a capacity rule, not an exemption from a charge, and like British Columbia's, South Australia's and the Northwest Territories' provisions it reaches the congregation's land and not the believer's home. The word "religious" appears three times in 132 pages and every one of them is section 171 or its table entry. Finally, three defects in the published text are recorded because a reader who checks should not think they are transcription errors here: the currency stamp that still reads "current to: currency date"; the heading of section 112.01, which prints "Error! Reference source not found." where the French title should be; and row 12 of the tariff, whose English column labels the six-hundred-dollar band "(a)" - the same letter as the fifty-dollar band four paragraphs above it - where the French column correctly reads "e)". The tariff also prices a "financial charge" seven times - a phrase that appears nowhere in the English text of the Act, whose own term is "financial encumbrance", which the tariff itself uses three times in its row headings.