M A I N   N E W S

Punjab realty relief
No stamp duty on property transfer in blood relations
Sarbjit Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 20
The Punjab Government has decided to end stamp duty on registration deeds in case of transfer of immoveable property to blood relations.

An order issued by Financial Commissioner (Revenue) NS Kang read: “The state government is pleased to remit stamp duty in whole chargeable on the instruments pertaining to transfer of immoveable property by an owner during his life time to any of his blood relations (ie children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters).”

Earlier, if a man wanted to transfer his property directly to his grandsons, he would have to pay 5 per cent stamp duty. In case of females, the rate was 3 per cent. But now, he would not have to pay any stamp duty at the time of getting any such transaction registered.

Earlier, the brother-sister relation was not included in the category of people eligible for remission of stamp duty. They (brothers and sisters) had to pay full stamp duty on such transactions. But now, if a sister transfers any immoveable property in the name of her brother (or vice versa), she will not have to pay any stamp duty.

A senior official of the Revenue Department said the collector rate of land in rural areas usually started from 20 lakh and it went up to Rs 1.5 crore per acre, especially in areas close to cities. The latest order will completely spare the specified blood relations from the payment of stamp duty.

With the coming into force of the new provision, the specified beneficiaries will be able to save Rs 1 lakh as stamp duty on the transfer of any immovable property worth Rs 20 lakh. The would save Rs 7.5 lakh in case the property was worth Rs 1.5 crore. However, other charges, including registration fee, infrastructure cess etc, will continue to be levied. This burden is around 4 per cent in urban areas and 1 per cent in rural areas.