What Do You Know About Quit Rent?

Committing yourself to owning a property is more than just paying the mortgage installment and utility bills on time every month; there are some quarterly and annual payments and costs of owning a property.

You may not be aware of when you sign the sales and purchase agreement, such as home insurance and quit rent.

While home insurance is not mandatory in owning a property in Malaysia, quit rent is something that every property owner has to pay before the deadline of May 31 every year. So, what is quit rent actually?

Quit rent, better known as Cukai Tanah in Malay, is a land tax collected by the state government through the land office. Regardless of whether they own a freehold or leasehold property and a landed or a stratified high-rise property, they are obligated to pay quit rent. If you fail to pay, a penalty charge on arrears is likely to be imposed by the government.

The next question in your mind could be, how much is the quit rent?

Quit rent is assessed as a chargeable rate related to the total amount of land included as part of a property. In other words, it is calculated by multiplying the size of an owned property in sq ft by the market rent rate of the area. Therefore, don’t be surprised that your 1,000 sq ft condo in George, Penang, may have a higher quit rent charge than your 1,600 sq ft landed house in the suburb area of Klang Valley.

In 2018, the Selangor state government created a new land tax to replace rent for strata properties, called the parcel rent. Several other major states with more and more stratified high-rise residential development have also followed suit, such as Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Similar to quit-rent, parcel rent is the rent for a strata title parcel calculated based on the sq ft of each parcel together, which the government used to charge to the Joint Management Body (JMB) or Management Corporation (MC) in one bill. With the parcel rent enforced, it is now a separate charge billed directly to the owners, which eases the sale and transfer of ownership of strata properties.

While the local land office will post or email the quit rent or parcel rent bill to property owners, you may check your quit rent on the online portals of a particular state’s Land and Mines Office.

Once you have received the bill, you can pay the quit rent at the headquarters or branches of the respective Pejabat Tanah Galian (PTG), district office, local council, post office, or even online (selective states only).

If you are staying in Selangor and eager to know how to pay your rent online, here are the steps you may refer to.

1. Log in to Selangor PTG’s online payment portal at ehasil.selangor.gov.my.
2. Search for your account and amount due by entering your account number, which is available in your quit rent bill.
3. Check the payment due and click “Bayar” next to the amount.
4. You will be required to make the payment via FPX transaction, log in with your online banking profile and make the payment.
5. Print or save the receipts as proof of payment. And you are all done!

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