From Mon­day 28, Stamp Du­ty Ex­emp­tion ap­pli­ca­tions for South Trinidad will on­ly be fa­cil­i­tat­ed on­line.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning an­nounced via a re­lease yes­ter­day that from June 28, the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion’s (TCPD) on­line plat­form for de­vel­op­ment per­mit­ting, De­vel­opTT, will launch the Stamp Du­ty Ex­emp­tion Cor­re­spon­dence and Sta­tus of Land Cor­re­spon­dence e-Ser­vices at the South Re­gion­al Of­fice.

The Min­istry said, “As such, man­u­al ap­pli­ca­tions for the Stamp Du­ty Ex­emp­tion Cor­re­spon­dence and Sta­tus of Land Cor­re­spon­dence will no longer be ac­cept­ed at the SRO ef­fec­tive June 28, 2021. Stake­hold­ers with­in the re­gion are en­cour­aged to reg­is­ter for the De­vel­opTT plat­form to utilise these soon to be launched e-Ser­vices.”

This is the lat­est re­gion to be added to the plat­form, which was launched in Feb­ru­ary start­ing with the T1 and T5 plan­ning re­gion; which meant prop­er­ty/sites lo­cat­ed with­in the North Re­gion­al area in­clu­sive of Diego Mar­tin, Port-of-Spain and San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions. T5 Re­gion’s bound­aries in­clude: Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion; Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; Por­tion of Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and a Por­tion of San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

By April, no pa­per-based ap­pli­ca­tions were ac­cept­ed in those north­ern re­gions.

The Min­istry said in its re­lease that this would al­so be the case in the South­ern re­gion as, “The SRO is cur­rent­ly be­ing op­er­a­tionalised in prepa­ra­tion for its suc­cess­ful De­vel­opTT in­te­gra­tion with con­tin­ued train­ing, reg­is­tra­tion and oth­er key mea­sures hav­ing been un­der­tak­en since the turn of the year.”

The re­lease con­tin­ued, “The Di­vi­sion would al­so like to note that up­on suc­cess­ful in­te­gra­tion of the Stamp Du­ty Ex­emp­tion Cor­re­spon­dence and Sta­tus of Land Cor­re­spon­dence e-Ser­vices, the De­vel­opTT Plan­ning Per­mis­sion e-Ser­vice will be made avail­able to the SRO. This e-Ser­vice will al­low ap­pli­ca­tions to be processed dig­i­tal­ly at the re­spec­tive South-based Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions.”

Stamp Du­ty is a tax that must be paid when car­ry­ing out cer­tain trans­ac­tions that re­quire le­gal doc­u­ments.  Deeds of Con­veyance, Deeds of Gift, Deeds of Mort­gage, Re­lease of Mort­gage Loan, Re­lease of Life In­sur­ance Poli­cies, Trans­fer of Shares, Deeds of Lease, Deed Polls, Bonds, and any oth­er deeds, re­quire “stamp­ing” which means users must pay du­ty.

The pub­lic is re­quired to pay Stamp Du­ty tax to the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion when buy­ing re­al es­tate or a home, seek­ing a mort­gage, or con­duct­ing oth­er fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions.

Stamp Du­ty Tax Ex­emp­tion can be re­quest­ed from the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion when buy­ing, sell­ing or dis­pos­ing of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties val­ued at TT $1,500,000 or less.