Rent Agreement Stamp Duty in Tamil Nadu

For a typical residential agreement up to 11 months, Tamil Nadu charges 1% of total rent for the term. Leases below 30 years pay 1% of the total rent, premium, and advances for the whole term — an 11-month agreement at ₹15,000/month owes ₹1,650.

Under Section 17 of the Registration Act, a lease of immovable property for 12 months or longer MUST be registered with the sub-registrar — which costs time, registration fees, and higher stamp duty. An 11-month agreement stays below that threshold, so it can be executed on stamp paper without mandatory registration. That's the whole reason 11 months became India's default tenancy term.

Two parallel regimes: sub-registrar registration is mandatory only for 12-month+ leases (Registration Act), BUT the TN Tenancy Act 2017 requires ALL tenancy agreements — regardless of duration — to be registered with the Rent Authority at tenancy.tn.gov.in. Most tenants must do the tenancy-portal registration even for 11 months.

E-stamp available; TNREGINET for document registration; the dedicated tenancy.tn.gov.in portal handles the mandatory Rent Authority registration.

An unstamped or under-stamped agreement is not admissible as evidence in court until the deficit duty plus a penalty (up to 10× the deficit in most states) is paid. Police verification, HRA claims, address proof, and eviction proceedings can all stumble on an unstamped agreement — the duty is small, so pay it upfront.

The law doesn't fix this; it's whatever the agreement says. In practice the tenant usually bears the stamp duty and registration costs in most Indian cities, though splitting 50:50 is common in some markets. Put the split in writing in the agreement itself.