Stamp duty exemption limit raised in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: In what may come as a relief for lower-middle class property buyers in Tamil Nadu, the State government has decided to raise the exemption limit on stamp duty and property registration fee from five thousand to twenty five thousand rupees. The new rule will come into effect from Thursday.

The State's Revenue Secretary Sunil Paliwal says this is in keeping with the "Chief Minister's announcement in the Assembly on the 15th of last month in order to protect poor people from the increase in guideline values."

Faced with a debt of over one lakh crore rupees, the Tamil Nadu government felt that it was losing revenue from a relatively low guideline value on property even though real estate prices have steadily escalated. So it had hiked the guideline value in April this year. The State treasury had received Rs 5,020 crore on stamp duty and registration charges in the last 2010-11 fiscal. With the new guideline value, the government hopes to mop up another 3000 crore rupees.

Guideline value is the minimum rate fixed by the government for the calculation of stamp duty and registration charges. It works out to about 9 per cent of the property value. The last revision of guideline value was done in 2007.