Stamp Duty and Court Fees in Punjab: What Has Been Sourced So Far

Islamabad Capital Territory and the provinces do not share a stamp duty schedule or a court fee scale, because both instruments have been separately amended since ICT was carved out. A document drafted for Punjab reads Punjab's own figures, not a borrowed ICT number with a different province's name typed above it. Here is what has actually been established for Punjab so far, and where the record still says nothing rather than guessing.

Court fees: a flat ad valorem rate, not a graduated one

Punjab's ad valorem court fee, the fee that applies to a plaint, a memorandum of appeal, an execution application or a suit not otherwise provided for, is a flat 7.5% of the value in dispute under Schedule I Article 1, capped at Rs. 15,000. That rate was set by the Punjab Finance Act 2006 and has stood since.

This is a genuinely different mechanism from Islamabad's own scale, not just a different number. ICT's ad valorem fee follows a graduated schedule under the same Article 1, capped at Rs. 3,000 before an adjustment under section 35A that can raise it to Rs. 3,450 on higher-value matters. Punjab's flat 7.5% capped at Rs. 15,000 sits well above that ceiling once the value in dispute is sizeable, which is worth knowing before you estimate a filing cost by habit rather than by the province you are actually filing in.

A possession suit under section 9 of the Specific Relief Act 1877 carries half the ordinary ad valorem rate, and a succession certificate is charged at 2% of the debt or security value, rising to 3% on any amount added later under an extension.

Stamp duty: what carries a sourced figure today

On the documents Legalise currently drafts for Punjab, four figures have been traced to their amending Finance Act and confirmed against the consolidated statute text:

An affidavit carries a fixed duty of Rs. 300, set by the Punjab Finance Act 2024.

A sale deed carries an ad valorem duty of 2% where the property is urban and 1% where it is rural or otherwise, under Article 23, which is not a single rate but two separately amended sub-articles. A registration-note surcharge applies on top: Rs. 500 where the consideration is Rs. 500,000 or less, and Rs. 1,000 above that. One correction worth stating plainly: a claim that circulates informally, that Punjab charges a uniform 1% regardless of location, does not match the primary text. Article 23 has always carried the urban and rural distinction; only the specific percentages have moved with successive Finance Acts.

A lease or rent agreement for a fixed term under twenty years with no premium carries a duty of 3.25% under Article 35.

A general power of attorney authorising up to ten persons carries a fixed duty of Rs. 2,000 under Article 48, rising to Rs. 3,000 where it is given without consideration to a close relative.

The one gap, stated rather than papered over

Article 48 also prices a power of attorney given for consideration at a percentage of the property's notified value, and the consolidated statute text attributes that specific rate to a 2014 Finance Act. That particular amending Act has not yet been independently located and read, so the consideration-based figure is not treated as confirmed and is not wired into a generated document. Everything else on this list has been checked against both the consolidated text and the amending Act's own gazette page; this one entry has not, and the honest position is to say so rather than to print a number that traces back to a citation nobody has actually verified.

What this means for a document you draft

None of this is exposed yet as a standalone Punjab calculator the way the Islamabad stamp duty page is. What it means today is narrower and more concrete: when a Punjab document is generated on the platform, the duty figure that appears is Punjab's own sourced rate for that instrument, drawn from the material above, and where a figure like the outstanding power of attorney rate has not been independently confirmed, the document says so rather than stating a number that has not actually been checked.