22 July 2011

IRAS has updated its website to inform taxpayers that from 1 Aug 2011, new measures will take place to safeguard conveyancing money including stamp duties.

Stamp duties for the following document types will be safeguarded:

(i) Conveyance, assignment or transfer of immovable property, i.e. buyers’ and sellers’ stamp duty [see Articles 3(a), (b), (ba), (bb) of First Schedule to Stamp Duties Act];

(ii) Exchange of immovable property [see Article 6];

(iii) Settlement involving immovable property [see Articles 3(e) and 11(a);

(iv) Transaction between trustees where the beneficial interest in immovable property passes [see Article 3(g)(i)];

(v) Distribution of immovable property in specie to shareholders in company liquidation [see Article 3(h)]; and

(vii) Gift involving immovable property [see Article 7];

(viii) Lease, licence or tenancy, or a surrender thereof [see Articles 1, 8(a), (b) or (c) or 12] where stamp duty amounts to $5,000 or more;

For registered users, stamp duty amounts for the affected documents will not be deducted from their GIRO accounts with IRAS upon e-stamping. Instead, a payment voucher will need to be generated to make stamp duty payment via cheque or cashier’s order.

Details of stamp duty payment modes can be found here.

The new measures are also found at the Conveyancing and Law of Property (Conveyancing) Rules 2011 at http://www.conveyancing.sg/. For FAQs on the new measures, please click here.

Source: The above was extracted from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) website. Visit http://www.iras.gov.sg/ for more information.