Buying or selling property? Sub-registrars to inform income tax department

Bengaluru: To prevent evasion of tax, the stamps and registration department has issued a circular mandating all sub-registrars across the state to collect the specified financial transaction (SSFT) statement from parties involved in property transactions exceeding Rs 30 lakh during document registration.

Submitting SSFT to the income tax department is obligatory under section 285BA(1) of the Income Tax Act-1961. The trigger for the circular, sources say, is that the I-T department had raised concerns about "several" sub-registrars failing to provide these statements.

The circular, issued by KA Dayananda, inspector general of registration and commissioner of stamps, stipulates that sub-registrars must gather specific information, including PAN card details and addresses of both buyers and sellers in a designated format. This format includes registration date, transaction value, property specifications, payment method, Aadhaar details, Form 60 receipt, birth date, contact information, and email. Both parties must verify and sign these details. The SSFT form must be scanned alongside other property transaction documents.


The circular instructs sub-registrars to withhold registration documents until SSFT details are collected, with accountability measures for any procedural oversights.

"We have already been submitting SSFT details to the I-T department regularly, but we've received the circular relating to it now. We will follow the direction," said a senior sub-registrar from Bengaluru.

A senior official of the registration and stamps department said sub-registrars are anyway mandated to report transactions of Rs 30 lakh or above. "Due to heavy workloads, sub-registrars sometimes fail to provide these details. Some have faced disciplinary action," the official said. "Now, parties involved in property transactions will not be able to collect registered documents if they fail to provide SSFT."

Sub-registrars have requested authorities to incorporate SSFT submission in the Kaveri-2.0 software, where parties upload registration documents. One sub-registrar said that manual SSFT collection increases workload, suggesting that enabling self-declared SSFT uploads through Kaveri-2.0 would streamline the process for both the department and I-T authorities.