Selling or holding a home in Singapore: SSD and property tax explained

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Kooky

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Two Singapore taxes follow a home after the purchase is done. One is charged only if the owner sells quickly: Seller's Stamp Duty, a percentage of the price that falls away once the home has been held long enough. The other arrives every year for as long as the owner holds the title: property tax, computed on what the home could earn in rent, whether or not anyone rents it.

Both are easy to misjudge. The Seller's Stamp Duty rate does not depend on the date of the sale alone, but on the date the seller bought, because the scale has been changed several times and each purchase keeps the scale of its own period. Property tax, for its part, is not a percentage of the price paid, and the same flat is taxed on two very different scales depending on whether its owner lives in it.

This guide sets out both taxes as the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), the Ministry of Finance and the Government's own explainer describe them: who pays, on what amount, at what rate, by when, and what the published sources leave open. The duties paid by the buyer are a separate subject and are not covered here.

IRAS declaration form for Seller's Stamp Duty on residential properties, updated 4 July 2025.

Two taxes, two different triggers

Seller's Stamp Duty, usually shortened to SSD, is a transaction tax. It is charged once, on a sale or disposal, and only when that sale comes within a set number of years of the purchase. A seller who holds beyond that period pays none. According to the IRAS declaration form that every residential seller completes, the duty is charged under section 22A of the Stamp Duties Act.

Property tax is a different kind of charge. The Government's explainer on property tax for residential property, published on 17 December 2025, calls it an asset tax levied on property ownership. It is not a tax on rental income, and it is payable whether the home is lived in by its owner, left vacant or rented out. It has no holding period and no end date: it is billed every year.

The two taxes therefore meet in one situation only. An owner who sells early may owe SSD on the sale and will also have paid property tax for each year of ownership. An owner who holds for the long term never meets SSD but pays property tax throughout. For a salesperson explaining costs to a client, the first question for SSD is "when did you buy?", and the first question for property tax is "do you live there?".

Which sales Seller's Stamp Duty reaches

The IRAS form sets the starting line: SSD applies to residential properties bought on or after 20 February 2010. A home acquired before that date attracts no SSD when it is sold, however short or long the ownership.

The Ministry of Finance's stamp duty policy page adds that the duty is not limited to homes. It also applies to industrial property bought on or after 12 January 2013. The rates and holding periods for industrial property are not set out in the sources read for this guide, so everything that follows concerns residential property only.

The form speaks of "sale or disposal" and of "sellers or transferors", which shows that the duty is framed around the disposal of the property and not only around an ordinary sale on the open market. How it applies to particular kinds of transfer is a matter for IRAS and the conveyancing lawyer in each case.

One limit of the published material should be stated plainly. The declaration form lists no exemptions or remissions: the only cases it shows as free of duty are those where the holding period has run out or the purchase predates 20 February 2010. Whether a given category of seller or property benefits from an exemption could not be confirmed from the primary pages available, and this guide does not assume any.

The rate depends on when the home was bought

There is no single SSD scale. The IRAS form sets out five periods of purchase, each with its own rates and its own holding period. A seller looks up the period in which the home was acquired, then the length of ownership within it.

For homes acquired on or after 4 July 2025, the form gives four steps: 16% for a sale after one year or less, 12% for two years or less, 8% for three years or less and 4% for four years or less. Beyond four years, no SSD is payable.

For homes acquired from 11 March 2017 to 3 July 2025, both dates included, the scale is shorter and lower: 12%, 8% and 4% for the first, second and third years, and nothing after more than three years.

Two older periods use a different method altogether. For homes acquired from 20 February 2010 to 29 August 2010, the form sets SSD at the same amount as the Buyer's Stamp Duty on the transaction if the sale took place within one year, and at nothing after that. For homes acquired from 30 August 2010 to 13 January 2011, the duty equals the Buyer's Stamp Duty for a sale within one year, two-thirds of it within two years and one-third within three years. Those holding periods ended many years ago, so these scales now matter mainly for the record.

The same is true, in practice, of the 14 January 2011 to 10 March 2017 column: a home bought on the last day of that period passed its four-year mark in March 2021. The two columns that still produce duty in October 2026 are the last two, and the line between them is 3 July 2025.

Counting the holding period: which dates count

IRAS answers the question directly on the Government's public question service: the holding period is generally calculated from the date of purchase or acquisition to the date of sale or disposal. The same answer gives the minimum holding period for each recent group of purchases: four years for homes acquired from 14 January 2011 to 10 March 2017, three years for those acquired from 11 March 2017 to 3 July 2025, and four years for those acquired on or after 4 July 2025.

Everything then turns on what "date of purchase" and "date of sale" mean, and the declaration form defines both. Neither is the day the keys change hands. Each follows an order of priority, and the first date that exists is the one that counts.

For the sale, the order is this.

For the purchase, the form lists four dates in the same spirit: the date the Option to Purchase was exercised; the date of the Sale and Purchase Agreement; the date of the Agreement for Lease, which the form applies to new HDB flats and to replacement flats under the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme; and the date of transfer where none of the first three is available or applicable.

The practical effect is that the clock starts and stops at the contract stage, not at completion. A seller who counts from the day of moving in will measure a shorter ownership than the one IRAS measures, since the option or agreement came earlier. At the other end, a seller cannot stay inside a lower band by delaying completion: once the buyer has exercised the option, the date of sale is fixed. The reverse also holds. A seller a few weeks short of a threshold changes the rate only if the buyer exercises the option, or signs the agreement, after the threshold has passed.

The IRAS answer says the holding period is "generally" calculated this way and refers readers to IRAS for other circumstances. The form itself gives no method for counting to the day. A sale that falls close to an anniversary of the purchase is therefore a case to put to the conveyancing lawyer, not one to settle from a table.

What the rate is applied to: a worked example

For every purchase from 14 January 2011 onward, the IRAS form states that the SSD rate is applied to the consideration or the market value, whichever is higher. The consideration is the price agreed. If a home changes hands for less than it is worth, the duty is computed on the worth, not on the price.

A worked example shows how much the purchase date matters. The figures are illustrative. Assume two sellers each sell a home for S$1,500,000, a price equal to market value, and that in both cases the buyer exercises the Option to Purchase on 15 September 2026.

• The first seller exercised the option to buy on 2 June 2025. The purchase falls in the 11 March 2017 to 3 July 2025 period. The home has been held for more than one year and less than two, so the rate is 8%: S$1,500,000 × 8% = S$120,000.
• The second seller exercised the option to buy on 1 August 2025. The purchase falls on or after 4 July 2025. The holding period is again more than one year and less than two, but the rate on this scale is 12%: S$1,500,000 × 12% = S$180,000.

Two purchases made two months apart, sold on the same day at the same price, produce duty bills S$60,000 apart. The first seller would owe nothing on a sale made after more than three years of ownership; the second would have to hold for more than four.

A second illustration covers a sale below value. Assume the second seller agrees a price of S$1,400,000 while the market value is S$1,500,000. At 12%, duty on the price alone would be S$168,000, but the rule takes the higher figure, so the duty stays at S$180,000. Who determines market value in a disputed case, and how, is not described on the form.

Paying the duty: 14 days and a signed declaration

The form gives one deadline: SSD is payable within 14 days after the date of sale or disposal. Because the date of sale is usually the day the buyer exercises the option, the 14 days run from that day, well before completion. In the worked example above, an option exercised on 15 September 2026 puts the last day for payment at 29 September 2026.

The seller's side of the paperwork is the declaration form itself. According to its own notes, completing it is mandatory. It records the date of purchase or acquisition and the date of sale or disposal, and each seller or transferor signs a declaration that the information is true and complete. The signature is witnessed by a solicitor or a Notary Public; for a seller who is overseas, the form says it has to be witnessed by a Notary Public.

The form is not sent to IRAS. The notes say the law firm keeps the original for at least five years from the date of sale or disposal, because IRAS may ask for it in an audit. It has room for up to three sellers, and a separate form is used where the sellers' holding periods differ, which can happen when co-owners acquired their shares at different times.

The consequences of getting it wrong are set out on the same page. Penalties of up to four times the duty may be imposed if SSD is not fully paid or not paid on time; on the S$120,000 of the first worked example, that ceiling would be S$480,000. Giving false information on the declaration may lead to a fine, imprisonment or both, where applicable.

How the holding period has moved since 2010

The five columns of the IRAS form are a short history of the duty. It began with purchases from 20 February 2010 as a charge on sales within one year. From 30 August 2010 it reached sales within three years, and from 14 January 2011 it took its present shape: a percentage of the price, falling year by year over four years from 16%.

In 2017 the scale was eased. A written reply by the Minister for Finance to a parliamentary question, published by the Ministry of Finance on 12 January 2022, records that the Government last changed SSD in 2017, when the holding period was shortened from four years to three. The IRAS form dates that scale from purchases on 11 March 2017.

The same reply explains why nothing moved at the next opportunity. In December 2021 the Government announced a package of measures to cool the private residential and HDB resale markets, and decided not to change SSD at that time because, in the Minister's words, "the situation on short-term holding has remained stable." The reply added that the Government would keep monitoring the market.

The change came later. For homes acquired on or after 4 July 2025, the IRAS form and the IRAS answer on holding periods both show a four-year holding period and rates of 16%, 12%, 8% and 4%, the same figures as the 2011 scale. The official announcement of that change could not be opened during the research for this guide, so its stated reasons are not reported here.

Property tax: a charge on annual value

Property tax starts from a figure most owners have never been quoted by a buyer or a bank: the annual value, or AV. The Ministry of Finance defines it as the estimated yearly rent a property could fetch if it were rented out. The Government's explainer gives the formula in one line: property tax equals the AV multiplied by the prevailing property tax rate.

The AV is not what a particular owner earns. According to the explainer, it is based on the market rents of similar or comparable properties; a five-room flat in Toa Payoh is valued by reference to the rents of similar five-room flats in Toa Payoh. A home that has never been let still has an AV, and an owner-occupier is taxed on it.

IRAS reviews AVs every year. The explainer says they may rise, fall or stay the same, depending on comparable rental transactions. A property tax bill can therefore change from one year to the next without any change in the rates, and without the owner doing anything at all.

The explainer also says why Singapore uses rents and not sale prices. Rental transactions are more numerous than sales, so an AV can be worked out for each property from comparable ones, and sale prices are more volatile than rents, so a rent-based tax is steadier. It notes that Hong Kong and Malaysia use market rents as well.

Owner-occupier rates and the 2025 bands

A home lived in by its owner is taxed on a progressive scale with eight bands. The Ministry of Finance and IRAS set out the bands in force from 1 January 2025 in a joint release of 29 November 2024, next to those of 2024.

The rates did not change between the two years; the bands did. The release explains that the revision, announced at Budget 2024, raised every owner-occupier band because residential AVs had risen significantly over the previous two years. Without it, the same home with a higher AV would have slipped into higher bands.

The scale is marginal: each rate applies only to the slice of AV inside its band. As a worked example on the 2025 bands, with illustrative figures, take an owner-occupied home with an AV of S$50,000. The first S$12,000 is taxed at 0%. The next S$28,000 is taxed at 4%, which gives S$1,120. The last S$10,000 is taxed at 6%, which gives S$600. The tax for the year is S$1,720, before any rebate. On the 2024 bands the same AV would have produced S$880 at 4%, S$600 at 6% and S$1,000 at 10%, a total of S$2,480.

The widening of the first band matters most for public housing. With the 0% band raised from S$8,000 to S$12,000, the release says that all one-room and two-room HDB flats continue to pay no property tax, and that other owner-occupied HDB flats pay 4% on the part of their AV above S$12,000. The release puts the average property tax of an owner-occupied flat in 2025, after that year's rebate, at S$1.90 a month for a three-room flat, S$11.95 for a four-room flat, S$15.40 for a five-room flat and S$17.15 for an executive flat, a category that excludes executive condominiums.

Two more points come from the same sources. Budget 2022, according to the Government's explainer, raised the rates for higher-value owner-occupied homes in two steps over 2023 and 2024. And the release states that owner-occupiers continue to enjoy lower rates than owners of homes that are not owner-occupied.

Rented and vacant homes: the higher scale

A residential property that its owner does not live in is taxed on a second scale, with four bands and no tax-free slice. The Government's explainer gives it as 12% on the first S$30,000 of AV, 20% on the next S$15,000, 28% on the next S$15,000 and 36% on any AV above S$60,000. Budget 2022 raised the rates for all non-owner-occupied residential properties over 2023 and 2024, the same two steps as for higher-value owner-occupied homes.

The distance between the two scales is best seen on identical homes. Take again an AV of S$50,000, with illustrative figures. On the non-owner-occupied scale, the first S$30,000 gives S$3,600, the next S$15,000 gives S$3,000 and the last S$5,000, taxed at 28%, gives S$1,400: S$8,000 for the year, against S$1,720 for an owner-occupier. At an AV of S$90,000, the owner-occupier scale gives S$6,620 (S$1,120, S$600, S$2,500 on the 10% band, S$1,400 on the 14% band and S$1,000 on the first S$5,000 of the 20% band). The other scale gives S$21,600: S$3,600, S$3,000, S$4,200 and S$10,800 on the S$30,000 above S$60,000.

Because the explainer says property tax is due whether a home is occupied, vacant or rented out, the higher scale is not a tax on landlords alone: on the page's wording, an empty home that is not owner-occupied falls on it as well. Cases such as properties held by deceased owners are referred by the explainer to IRAS.

For an owner who lets the property, the explainer notes one offset. Property tax and income tax are separate: income tax applies to the rental income, and the property tax paid on a rented-out property may be claimed as an expense against that income.

Rebates, bills and paying by instalment

Owner-occupiers have received a one-off rebate in each of the last two years, deducted from the bill. For 2025, the Ministry of Finance and IRAS announced 20% for owner-occupied HDB flats and 15% for owner-occupied private residential properties, the latter capped at S$1,000, applied automatically. For 2026, the Government's explainer gives a one-off rebate of 15% for owner-occupied HDB flats and 10% for owner-occupied private residential properties, the latter capped at S$500.

Continuing the earlier illustration on the bands in force from 1 January 2025, an owner-occupied private home with an AV of S$50,000 and a tax of S$1,720 would see a 10% rebate of S$172 in 2026, leaving S$1,548. At an AV of S$90,000, 10% of S$6,620 would be S$662, so the S$500 cap applies and S$6,120 remains. These are computations from the published rates, not IRAS bills; the release itself tells owners to pay by the due date specified on their tax bill.

The calendar is fixed. According to the explainer, property tax is payable yearly in advance: the bill for the coming year is issued at the end of each year and payment is due on 31 January. Other notices from IRAS during the year are due one month from the date of the notice. The 2024 release describes how bills travel: those for 2025 were sent in batches from December 2024, by SMS or email, and could be viewed on the myTax Portal.

An owner who does not want to pay in one sum can use GIRO, the interbank direct debit arrangement, which according to both sources allows up to 12 interest-free monthly instalments, or a single deduction. On the S$1,548 of the example, 12 instalments come to S$129 a month. The release also describes an extended scheme for retirees, with instalments over up to 24 months, on three conditions: all owners of the property are aged 65 or above, the applicant lives in the property, and the applicant's assessable income does not exceed S$34,000 on the latest tax assessment. Owners in financial difficulty are told they can approach IRAS before the due date to arrange a longer plan.

Missing the date has a set price. The release states that a 5% late payment penalty applies to owners who have neither paid by the due date nor set up GIRO instalments. On a bill of S$1,548, that is S$77.40.

For a seller, the two taxes finally connect at the planning stage. Property tax is a known yearly cost that follows the AV and the way the home is used. SSD is a cost that exists only inside a window fixed by the purchase date, measured between two contract dates that the IRAS form defines, and it disappears the day that window closes.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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