Remember to Pay Your Land Tax (Cukai Tanah)

In case you do not know, you need to pay the land tax (cukai tanah) once a year for all the properties that you own in Malaysia. However in some cases,  the land office doesn’t have the address information about you so they won’t send you any statement reminder.

This is especially true if you buy your new house or new property from the developer. By right, the developer should instruct the land office to change the address to your new house but this doesn’t happen to all the cases. So they can’t send you the statement as a reminder. You will have to update the address by your own at land office.

Anyway I checked with the land officer(for Kedah only), they told me even though they have the address, they won’t send out the statement as well. The homeowner needs to come the land office to pay for their land tax. Huh, what a crap? You will get the penalty too if you don’t pay and they also won’t send you any penalty statement as well. What a crap?

Assuming if you take the loan for 30 years, your land tax fee is RM80 and the penalty is RM20 yearly. So for 30 years, you will owe the land office RM3000. You will need to pay this when you want to settle your loan with the bank or else the bank will not release your house title to you. You also need to pay this this one shot if you want to sell your house.

This happened to me this year when I wanted to settle my loan but luckily it was only for 4 years so I did not need to pay a lot. Assuming for those who do not know about this, they will have to pay large amount of money including the penalty fees. Why we need to waste such money right?


Few Tips:

• Make sure you pay your land tax (cukai tanah) every year if you own any properties. If you do not get any statement or make any payment for your land tax (cukai tax) before, I think it is better for you to check it out at the land office.

• For strata buildings, you have 2 titles (i.e. Master title and Strata title). You have 2 payments to made. The first payment is land tax / quit rent (cukai tanah) for master title. The second payment is door tax (cukai pintu) for the Strata title. See note (1) below.

Note (1) : Master title refers to the land where the building the land is shared between the unit owners. The Strata title however belongs to the individual unit owner which refers to the door tax (cukai pintu) of which payment is not shared.


Hope this is something useful to share. I'm not sure what "Cukai Pintu" should be called in English, so I just call it "Door Tax" but it sounds funny. Please check your land tax (cukai tanah) payment with the land office if you haven’t paid a single cent before and the worst thing is you need to remind yourself to do such payment every year!

Also, this probably most applicable for those who has landed property because usually for Strata property, everything will be taken care by your property management and they will request you to pay for it.