Tenancy agreement stamp duty calculator

Duty is charged at 0.4%. For a term of four years or less it applies to the total rent across the whole term. For a term over four years, or an indefinite one, it applies to four times the average annual rent instead, which caps what a long tenancy costs.

Average annual rent is the total rent divided by the term in years, and it counts more than the headline figure. Maintenance, service charges, furniture and fittings, and advertising and promotion charges payable under the tenancy all count toward it. GST does not.

Where the average annual rent is S$1,000 or less, nothing is payable. Otherwise the duty is rounded down to the nearest dollar, with a minimum of S$1.

The rule is that a document is stamped before it is signed. What the deadlines buy is freedom from penalty, not permission to sign first: stamping within 14 days of signing in Singapore, or 30 days of the document reaching Singapore if it was signed overseas, means no penalty is charged.

Miss it and the penalty is S$10 or the duty payable, whichever is greater, for a delay of up to three months, and S$25 or four times the duty beyond three months. On a small tenancy the four-times figure is usually the one that bites.

Penalties are not the whole of it. IRAS can appoint a third party holding money for you to recover the amount, and its published list includes your bank, your employer and your tenant. It can also issue a Travel Restriction Order. A reduced penalty of 5% a year, calculated daily, applies to a qualifying voluntary disclosure.

This is the part that catches people who stamped correctly the first time. A variation or supplemental agreement is a document in its own right, and whether duty is payable turns on which direction the change goes.

Duty is payable where the rent increases or the term is extended, charged on the increase or on the rent for the extended period. No duty is payable where the rent decreases or the term is shortened.

No duty is payable either for changing the use of the property with no additional payment, lifting a restriction with no additional payment, amending terms that affect neither the rent nor the term, or bringing the start forward or deferring it before commencement without changing the term or the gross rent. IRAS gives adding an option to renew as its own example of a change that attracts nothing.

The agreement decides. Where it says who pays, that is who pays, which is why the question is worth settling in the document rather than after it.

Where the agreement is silent, liability follows the Third Schedule of the Stamp Duties Act, and for a lease or tenancy agreement, an agreement for lease, an acceptance to a letter of offer, or an agreement for variation of lease, that is the tenant. A surrender of lease with payment is the landlord's, and a novation or assignment with additional consideration is the incoming tenant's.

Sources, all IRAS: renting a property, late payment, and who should pay. Read on 2026-09-08. Rules change, and this page is a summary of them rather than a substitute for them.