e-Stamp
The Gujarat Stamp Act, 1958 was amended in 2025. Rate tables published on websites are copied from each other, rarely dated, and almost never corrected. A person who relies on one and pays the wrong duty does not find out on the day — he finds out later, when a court, a bank or a Sub-Registrar looks at the instrument and says it is insufficiently stamped. That is a worse outcome than not having a number at hand. We confirm the current figure at the counter, for your document, on the day you execute it.
Step one: identify the instrument
Stamp duty is a tax on instruments, not on transactions. Everything begins with identifying which article of the Schedule to the Gujarat Stamp Act, 1958 your document falls under — affidavit, agreement, conveyance, lease, bond, power of attorney, mortgage, partnership, and so on. Each article carries its own charge.
This is where most errors are made, and they are made in the drafting. A document is classified by what it does, not by what it is titled. Calling something a memorandum of understanding does not make it one if it operates as an agreement to sell. Calling a document a receipt does not save it if it acknowledges the creation of a right in property. And a single instrument that does several things may attract duty on more than one count.
Step two: fixed duty or ad valorem?
- Fixed duty — a set amount for the instrument regardless of value. Affidavits and several declaratory documents work this way.
- Ad valorem — duty calculated on a value. Conveyances, agreements to sell, mortgages, leases and gifts are in this group, and the base differs by article: consideration for some, market value for others, rent and deposit for leases, secured amount for mortgages.
Step three: which value, for a conveyance
For instruments conveying immovable property, duty is charged on the consideration stated or the market value, whichever is higher. The market value is not a matter of opinion. Gujarat maintains the Jantri — the annual statement of rates by area and property type — and the Jantri value of the property is what is compared with your stated consideration.
Two consequences follow, and both surprise people. If you have genuinely bought below Jantri, you still pay duty on the Jantri figure. And an under-stated consideration does not reduce duty; it simply creates a document that does not reflect the truth, with the duty still assessed on the higher value. This is treated in more detail at sale deed stamp duty.
They are area-specific, type-specific and revised. Quoting one for a locality would be worse than useless, because the reader would apply it to the wrong survey number or the wrong category of construction. Bring your property details and we work with the current position.
Step four: additions and adjustments
Duty is one line in the cost of a document; it is not the only one. Registration fee, where the document goes to the Sub-Registrar, is charged separately and on its own basis. Reliefs, remissions and concessions exist for certain classes of instrument and certain parties, and whether one applies to you is a question of the current notifications, not of a general rule. Where an instrument follows an earlier stamped instrument in the same transaction, an adjustment may be available. All of these are checked for the individual document.
The 2025 amendment inserted an Explanation treating copies, extracts and photocopies as original instruments for duty purposes. The habit of stamping one set and photocopying the rest for the other parties needs to be abandoned. Decide the number of executed sets before the stamp is issued.
The timing rule that catches people
Duty is payable before or at the time of execution. Not afterwards. An unstamped or insufficiently stamped instrument can generally be regularised, but the process is slow, involves a penalty, and typically becomes urgent because someone is waiting on the document. Almost every such case we see began with a signature that came before a visit to the stamping counter.
The other half of the same rule: do not buy in advance either. A certificate bought speculatively names parties and an instrument, records a date and a duty, and does not adapt to the deal you eventually strike. See e-stamp certificates.
What to bring so we can compute it
The whole calculation turns on four things: what the instrument does, who the parties are, what value it deals with, and what property or subject matter it concerns. Bring those and the figure takes minutes. We are a Government authorised e-Stamping centre, CSC ID 136237240013, so the certificate is issued in the same visit.
What to bring
- The draft document, or a clear description of what it is meant to achieve
- Names and identity documents of all parties
- Consideration, loan amount, rent and deposit, or secured amount — the actual figures
- Property details: survey or city survey number, area, construction type, locality
- Index-2 or the previous sale deed where there is an earlier registered instrument
- Any earlier stamped agreement in the same transaction, such as a banakhat