6.3 Law of Stamp Duty

The instrument-tax (the documents' duty): The concept: the stamp duty — the tax on LEGAL INSTRUMENTS (the deeds, the agreements, the transactions' papers): the state's charge on the document's legal life; The frame: the Stamp Duty Act's regime (the duties' schedule — the instrument-types' enumeration) with the Finance Act's annual rates (the duty's calibration as the budget's regular face); The machinery: the stamp's purchase (the adhesive-and-e-stamp faces); the instrument's stamping (the time-and-manner); the collection (the registration offices' interface — the duty's payment with the deed's registration); The consequences' discipline (the exam's point): the unstamped-or-understamped instrument's fate — inadmissible in evidence (the court's bar until the duty-and-penalty's payment); the impounding machinery (the officer's duty to seize-and-report); The distinction (the pair not to merge): the stamp duty (the INSTRUMENT's tax) vs the registration fee (the REGISTRATION's charge — the deed's entry into the public record) — the two charges on the same transaction, different laws, different purposes; The fiscal-policy face: the stamp duty's yield as the transactions' barometer (the property market's pulse); the evasion's faces (the undervalued deeds — the valuation-gap problem of Unit 3's property-tax world). Exam Focus Long questions: (i) The VAT law (the principle-registration-rates-cycle-enforcement chain + the federalism face); (ii) The land tax (the historical line → the federal transformation → the present machinery); (iii) The stamp duty (the…