KUCHING: Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) strongly supports the Chief Minister’s decision to oppose the proposed Stamp (Amendment) Bill 2016.
The party categorically states that it will vote against the proposed amendment, which is currently being tabled and debated in Parliament, said secretary general Dato’ Sebastian Ting (pic).
Ting who is also the Piasau State Assemblyman said the Stamp Act 1949 (or Act 378) was extended to Sarawak in 1989 where all stamp duties collected become Federal revenue instead of State revenue.
“It is disheartening to see that the proposed amendment continues to ignore the rights of Sarawak guaranteed by the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and the Federal Constitution regarding its collected stamp duties revenue. The power to collect stamp duties for land and any other dealings in land belonging to Sarawak is under the jurisdiction of the State by the virtue of Item 2 List 2 in the State List of the Ninth Schedule, which is also considered to be part of revenue from lands assigned to the State under Item 2 Part 3 of the Tenth Schedule in the Federal Constitution. All stamp duties levied on dealings or transactions involving land collected and registered under the SarawakLand Code should be paid to the State. Constitutionally, revenues from land rightfully belong to the State and should go directly into the State Consolidated Fund and not to the Federal coffer. To sum it all up, SUPP strongly believes that the Federal Stamp Act 1949 is not applicable to us,” said Ting.
He added SUPP therefore strongly urges the Federal Government to insert an exclusion clause in the Stamp (Amendment) Bill 2016 to exclude the application of the Federal Stamp Act to Sarawak like what was done in the Federal’s Gas Supply (Amendment) Bill 2016.
Ting said at the moment, the full stamp duties are only payable during the stage of the registration of the Memorandum of Transfer (MOT) or Deed of Assignment (DOA) in the case of sub sale without title, which will take a few months in the former case, to enable the purchaser to obtain loan from bank; and years in the case of the latter, upon the issuance of individual document of title or subsidiary title for the strata units. Only a nominal fee of RM 10 is levied on the stamping of the Sale and Purchase Agreement and Deed of Assignment (DOA).
After this proposed amendment, if passed by Parliament, and becomes law, it is compulsory for the property buyers to pay full stamp duty upon the signing and stamping of the Sale and Purchase Agreement and a nominal sum of RM 10 is levied at the final stage of the registration of MOT or DOA as the case may be.
The rates of stamp duty chargeable are as follows: for first RM 100,000 is 1 per cent; for RM 200,000 to 500,000 is 2 per cent; for RM 500,000 to one million rinngit is three per cent; and if above RM1 million the duty is 4 per cent.
“This will cause undue hardship and burden to the property buyers as they will have to provide their own fund to pay for the stamp duty at the time of the signing of the Sale and Purchase Agreement in circumstance where the house buyers will have to come up with the deposit and upfront first and the balance of the Purchase Price to be financed by way of bank loan,” he pointed out.
Overall, Ting argued that the new payment scheme will likely affect the property market or the developers as the potential buyers would be reluctant to enter into sale and purchase agreement for the acquisition of their real property and even if the Sale and Purchase Agreement is subsequently terminated by the parties thereto for whatever reasons, it is unclear as to when such refund of prepaid stamp duty would be received by the property buyers.
“Our party that will work closely with the Chief Minister and BN collectively, and even if the Bill were to be passed by the Parliament, the new Act must contain a clause to exclude and not be extended to Sarawak,” Ting said.
