Registration fee set to increase

Cost of non-asset transactions to rise in Sept.

After increasing basic market value of registration of agriculture land and non-agriculture properties besides increasing registration charges and stamp duty recently, the state government is all set to increase user charges for all other services being provided by the stamps and registrations department.

Charges for firm registration, marriage registration, society registration etc are likely to be hiked from September.

The government increased property registration charges with effect from July 22 expecting to fetch an additional revenue of `12,000 crore per year.

Besides property registrations, the stamps and registrations department offers various services for which it collects charges.

Sources said the government felt that the existing user charges were nominal which needed to be revised as they were not revised in the last seven years. The major among these are registration of marriages, firms, societies/associations, NRIs, trusts and chit funds among others. These apart, user charges are collected for general power of attorney (GPA), special power of attorney, exchange, partition, lease, will etc. The existing charges for many of these services range from `20 to `100 except GPA authorising family members to sell, transfer or develop imm-ovable property for which `1,000 is being collected.

The government is planning to effect a steep hike in these user charges. It is focussing on non-tax revenues to raise funds to overcome Covid-induced financial crisis.