Markham’s tree removal permit fee is listed at $20.50. That number is real. It only opens the file. The actual cost of removing a protected tree is a separate line: $203.50 for the first tree, $102 for every tree after that, both filed under a completely different name on the city’s fee schedule. Read the $20.50 as the whole bill and you’re short by at least $203.50 before an arborist has quoted anything.
The $20.50 Fee Only Opens the File
Markham’s Tree Preservation By-law 2023-164 protects any private tree with a trunk 20 centimetres or more in diameter, measured at 1.37 metres above the ground. Multi-stem trees go through a quadratic. Measure each stem at 1.37 metres, square each figure, add the squares, then take the square root of the total. That result is the diameter the city works from. Public land is different: every tree there is protected, regardless of size.
If your tree clears that threshold, you apply for a permit and pay a $20.50 Residential Tree Removal Permit Processing Fee. That fee is non-refundable, and it credits against nothing later. All it buys is a reviewed file.
The 2026 fee schedule, under By-law 2012-137, then lists the real removal charges separately: $203.50 for the first tree and $102 for each additional one, filed under “Tree Preservation By-law Inspection Administration,” not under the processing line at all. One tree coming down runs you $224 in city fees before you’ve paid an arborist a dollar. Two trees runs $326. HST applies on top, per Section 7.1 of the fee bylaw.
Two Fees Almost Nobody Budgets For
The 2026 schedule carries a pair of charges that don’t get mentioned much outside the fine print. A Tree Preservation Zone Sign Fee runs $20.50 for each sign posted on a tree protection zone barrier. Appendix C of the March 2026 TAPP requirements specifies exactly what that sign looks like: 24 by 18 inches, white Coroplast.
If the city refuses or revokes your permit, appealing that decision to a Hearing Officer costs $156.50 (the Private Tree Appeal Fee), filed within 10 days of the written decision. Miss that window and the Administrator’s call is final.
Construction Work Runs Through TAPP Instead
A straight residential removal (one dead maple, one overgrown spruce) goes through the permit process above. Anything tied to a Housing, Demolition, Alterations, or Pool Enclosure Permit does not. That work runs through a Tree Assessment and Preservation Plan, or TAPP. TAPP sits ahead of Residential Grading and Servicing (RGS) approval, and it gets submitted through the city’s ePlan portal at eplanportal.markham.ca. Your project’s tree conditions have to clear before construction starts.
TAPP pulls in more than your own yard. Any neighbouring or city-owned tree within 6 metres of your site gets inventoried, no matter how small, right alongside every tree 20 centimetres or larger on your own property. More than 30 trees on the site, and every one of them gets field-tagged individually.
The TAPP review fee itself is $500 flat for sites with 1 to 15 trees, and $500 plus $20 per tree once you pass 15. It has to be prepared and signed by a qualified tree expert: an Ontario Qualified Arborist, an ISA Certified Arborist, or a Registered Professional Forester.
Markham’s TAPP requirements also flag a Schedule A fee under a separate planning bylaw, By-law 211-83, for the RGS review stream itself. That’s not an error. By-law 211-83 is Markham’s planning-applications fee instrument and covers the development and RGS review stream, while By-law 2012-137 Schedule B carries the residential tree-permit fees. Different streams, running in parallel.
Replanting Counts Come Out of a Condition Formula
If your permit comes with a replanting condition, Markham calculates the count using something called the Progressive Aggregate Caliper Method, or PACM, defined in Section 1(t) of the bylaw. The count tracks how healthy the tree was. Take the DBH, multiply it by the average of the structural and physiological condition percentages, then divide by the caliper of the replacement stock.
The city publishes a worked example. A 20 centimetre DBH tree rated 40% structural condition and 80% physiological condition, replaced with standard 5 centimetre caliper stock, works out to 20 x ((0.4+0.8)/2)/5, or 2.4 replacement trees.
Condition ratings scale the whole result, so a beat-up 20 centimetre tree draws fewer replacements than a healthy one of the same size. Standard replacement stock is 50 millimetres caliper for deciduous species, or 250 centimetres in height for coniferous. Planting and cash-in-lieu are both discretionary conditions the Administrator may impose. Where cash is taken instead, the 2026 schedule sets the replacement tree value at $687 full indexed or $343.50 half indexed.
There’s a second, blunter method that sometimes gets confused with PACM: the plain Aggregate Caliper Method, used for enforcement orders rather than ordinary permits. It swaps diameter for 5 centimetre caliper trees, centimetre for centimetre. Where a removed tree only shows up in aerial photos, with no physical evidence on site, the replacement ratio jumps to 6 to 1.
If your permit conditions mention PACM, that’s the standard math above. If a violation notice mentions the Aggregate Caliper Method without “Progressive” in front of it, that’s the enforcement version, and a different number entirely. Our replanting and cash-in-lieu breakdown walks through how other GTA cities calculate the same requirement.
A Dying Tree Still Needs a Permit Application
Markham has no separate emergency-removal path. A dead, dying, or hazardous tree still needs a permit application filed before it comes down. What changes is the review speed: a TRAQ-qualified arborist’s Tree Risk Assessment Report can get that application moving faster. Cutting first and explaining later is called out explicitly as a chargeable offence, even when the tree really was hazardous.
The practical answer is to have the risk report sitting ready before the storm, not scrambled together after the limb comes down. Our guide to getting a dead tree permit before storm season covers what that documentation needs to contain.
Standard Processing Runs 45 Days
Once payment clears, Markham reviews applications within 45 days. Payment itself is due within 24 hours of the billing email. Pay late, and the application can get cancelled outright. The clock starts when the money lands, not when you hit submit, which is the detail that wrecks timelines built around a closing date or a contractor’s start.
Where This Sits in the Bylaw
Markham’s Tree Preservation By-law 2023-164 passed December 13, 2023, replacing the older 2008-96 bylaw. It’s diameter-based and applies city-wide, with no separate heritage-district or environmentally significant area carve-out inside the bylaw itself. Anything in Unionville or Markham Village runs through a separate Official Plan or site-plan process instead.
The bylaw exempts Woodlands (at least 1 hectare, with specified stem densities) and Woodlots (at least 0.2 hectares and no greater than 1 hectare) from its coverage. Those fall under York Region’s Forest Conservation By-law 2013-68 instead. Fees themselves live in a separate, regularly updated instrument, By-law 2012-137, currently the schedule effective January 1, 2026.
A first conviction under the tree bylaw carries a fine of not less than $300 and not more than $100,000. Where the contravention continues, the city can add $100 to $10,000 for every day it does, and a second or subsequent offence shifts the range to $400 to $10,000, with daily totals allowed to pass $100,000.
Getting the Application Right the First Time
Most of the rework we see on Markham files traces back to two things: a DBH taken at the wrong height, and condition ratings that fall apart once a reviewer runs them through PACM. The Arborist Group prepares tree removal reports for Markham permits and TAPP submissions, from a single backyard tree to a full site inventory ahead of a building permit. Contact us with your address and what’s planned, and we’ll tell you which stream you’re in before you file.