Stamp Duty and Registration Charges in Bangalore 2026

Stamp duty and registration charges are the largest cost of buying a Bangalore home after the price itself, and they are also the numbers the internet gets wrong most often. Two things changed recently that many popular guides have not caught up with: Karnataka doubled the registration fee from 1% to 2% in August 2025, and the widely republished '2% up to 20 lakh, 3% up to 45 lakh' slab table only ever applied to the first sale of a flat, never to resales, plots or houses. Every rate in this guide is taken from the Karnataka Stamp Act schedule, the Karnataka Gazette or the Department of Stamps and Registration's own documents, with the exact notification numbers cited so you can check them yourself.

The five amounts involved when you register

How the charges stack: 5% stamp duty, 0.5% cess, 0.1% surcharge and the 2% registration fee reach 7.6% of the property value in Bengaluru city (gram panchayat areas: 3% surcharge, 7.65% total). The smallest segment, the surcharge, is drawn at a minimum width to stay visible; at true scale it would be a hairline. All other widths are proportional.

The first four go to the government on top of your price: 7.6% of the property value in Bengaluru city. TDS is different: it comes out of the seller's money, not on top of yours, but you as the buyer are responsible for deducting and depositing it.

Stamp duty in Karnataka: the real slab structure

The standard rate for any conveyance of immovable property is 5% of the market value, under Article 20(1) of the Karnataka Stamp Act's schedule. That covers resale flats, sites and plots, independent houses and commercial property, whatever their value. For an under-construction flat conveyed by the builder, Article 20(2) values the unit as if fully constructed, irrespective of the stage of construction.

The lower rates you see quoted everywhere come from Article 20(2A), and the Act's own words limit them to an instrument of conveyance 'relating to the first sale of flat or apartment':

The correction that saves buyers from a wrong budget: most aggregator tables present the 2% and 3% bands as general slabs for all property. They are not. The Act restricts them to the first sale of a flat or apartment; the bands were inserted by Act 55 of 2020 (effective 19-11-2020) and Act 26 of 2021 (effective 05-10-2021) to help affordable first-sale housing. A 40 lakh resale flat pays 5%, not 3%.

On top of the duty, two add-ons apply everywhere in Karnataka. The cess is an additional stamp duty of 10% of the duty, under Section 3-B of the Stamp Act itself; the statute earmarks it for infrastructure projects, metro equity and the rural roads fund in a 57:28:15 split. The surcharge depends on where the property sits: 2% of the duty inside BBMP limits (Section 175 of the BBMP Act 2020) and other city corporations (Section 140, Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act 1976), and 3% of the duty in gram panchayat areas (Section 205, Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act 1993). The arithmetic lands at an effective 5.6% in Bengaluru city and 5.65% in rural areas.

Property registration charges in Karnataka: the 2% fee

The registration fee is separate from stamp duty and it changed recently. By Notification No. RD/46/MNMU/2025 dated 29 August 2025, published in the Karnataka Gazette Extraordinary No. 513 and issued under Section 78 of the Registration Act 1908, the fee in the Table of Registration Fees was raised from Rs 10 per Rs 1,000 to Rs 20 per Rs 1,000, that is from 1% to 2%, effective 31 August 2025. The base fee table dates back to a 1986 notification, and press reporting at the time of the hike noted the fee had last been revised in 2003.

The department's own press release settled the transition questions: anyone who had paid the 1% fee but not yet registered had to pay the difference through the Kaveri portal using the same login, and documents already under verification were recalculated at 2%. If you are reading a guide that still shows 1%, it predates 31 August 2025.

Flat registration charges in Bangalore: worked examples

All three examples use the rates above; the arithmetic is exact, not approximate.

In a gram panchayat area the surcharge line rises from 2% to 3% of the duty, taking the total from 7.6% to 7.65%.

Gift deed stamp duty in Karnataka

Gifting property is charged very differently depending on who receives it, under Article 28 of the schedule:

• Gift to family: a fixed duty, not a percentage. ₹5,000 if the property is within BBMP, BMRDA or any city corporation limits; ₹3,000 within a city or town municipal council or town panchayat; ₹1,000 elsewhere. Cess and surcharge apply on top of the fixed duty. The Act's own definition of family for this purpose is: father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter, daughter-in-law, brothers, sisters and grandchildren.
• Gift to anyone else: treated exactly like a sale. 5% duty on the market value, plus cess and surcharge, plus the registration fee.

One honest gap: the registration fee on a family gift deed is widely quoted online as a small fixed amount, but the underlying fee-table entry is not published anywhere we could verify, so we do not repeat a figure here. Budget for the fixed stamp duty plus levies, and confirm the fee on the Kaveri portal at the time of drafting.

Other documents a buyer will meet

The February 2024 amendment (Karnataka Act 04 of 2024) is worth knowing about: it left sale, gift and lease rates untouched but raised about fifty fixed duties, which is why the 0.5% agreement and mortgage figures differ from older guides. Duty paid on a sale agreement is not wasted money; it adjusts against the sale deed duty between the same parties for the same property.

How the value is decided, and how you pay on Kaveri

Duty is charged on the higher of your agreed price or the government guidance value. That is not practice, it is the statute: Section 2(1)(mm) of the Stamp Act defines market value as the open-market price or the stated consideration, whichever is higher, and Sections 45-A and 45-B empower Sub-Registrars to check your declared value against the published guidance value and refer undervalued documents to the Deputy Commissioner. Before you budget, check the guidance value for your area; if your negotiated price is below it, duty is still computed on the guidance value.

Payment and registration now run through Kaveri 2.0. You register as a citizen, enter the document details (the system pulls seller records from Bhoomi, e-Swathu, e-Aasthi and BBMP databases), the Sub-Registrar approves or returns the application within 24 hours, you pay duty, cess, surcharge and the fee online by net banking, card or UPI, and you book a slot. Since the Karnataka Stamp (Digital e-Stamp) Rules 2025 (gazette notification of 7 August 2025, operationalised on Kaveri-2 in January 2026), payment generates a digital e-stamp with a unique number, and the repository copy is legally the original stamp. A few practical rules from the department's own FAQ: witnesses cost ₹100 each, officials visiting you for private attendance cost ₹1,000, and stamp duty is refundable if you cancel before registration but not after.

Concessions: mostly, there are none

Karnataka has no stamp duty concession for women buyers; Article 20 is gender-neutral, unlike Delhi or Uttar Pradesh, and no notification grants one. There is no general first-time-buyer discount either. The only value-linked relief is the first-sale flat bands up to 45 lakh described above. Anyone promising you a gender or first-timer discount in Karnataka is quoting another state's rules.

The Kannada terms you will see

Stamp duty is ಮುದ್ರಾಂಕ ಶುಲ್ಕ (mudranka shulka) and the registration fee is ನೋಂದಣಿ ಶುಲ್ಕ (nondani shulka); the department is the ನೋಂದಣಿ ಮತ್ತು ಮುದ್ರಾಂಕ ಇಲಾಖೆ, and the Kaveri portal is ಕಾವೇರಿ ನೋಂದಣಿ ಪೋರ್ಟಲ್. These spellings are taken from the department's own gazette and press documents, not transliteration guesses.

Quick reference

Stamp duty and registration are one leg of the closing cost; the other documents that decide whether you should sign at all are the sale deed versus sale agreement distinction and a clean encumbrance certificate. After registration, the khata transfer puts the property into your name in municipal records. If you are still choosing between a ready flat and an under-construction one, GST changes the total too; our ready-to-move versus under-construction comparison builds the full cost stack for both.