The Cayman Islands Government is owed CI$1,157,342.54 in unpaid stamp duty on property documents, Lands and Survey Department records show.

The Stamp Duty Act lets the Commissioner recover unpaid duty as a civil debt, charge interest at 20% a year, and prosecute a buyer who fails to have a land transfer stamped within 45 days, with a fine of CI$500,000 and five years in prison in play on conviction. The department's own schedule records none of those steps. Of its 176 line items, 166 carry the status "1st advisory" and nothing more.

The figure is the total of an eight-page schedule headed "Documents Awaiting Outstanding Funds", released by the department on 2 October 2026 under reference FOI/119252 in response to a Freedom of Information request The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) sent by email on 7 September 2026. The schedule has six columns: "Date of 1st Email", "Amount Owed (CI$)", "Date Amount Due", "Date of 2nd Email", "Response from Customer" and "Status". Each line records one document, a land transfer, lease, mortgage or similar instrument, and the duty owed on it. The department redacted the block and parcel number and the customer name on every line, citing section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act (2021 Revision), which exempts records whose disclosure "would involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information of any individual". Nobody on the schedule is identified.

What stamp duty is, and who collects it

Stamp duty is a charge on documents rather than on people or land. Section 3(1) of the Stamp Duty Act (2019 Revision) charges it "for the revenue of the Islands" on the instruments listed in the Act's Schedule, at the rates set there, and section 27 allows the Schedule to be varied by regulations; the two most recent sets were made in Cabinet in 2025. The document that transfers a house, grants a lease or secures a mortgage is not properly stamped until the duty on it is paid.

A transfer of property carries 7.5% of the price or market value, whichever is higher, and 10% where that figure is CI$2 million or more, a rate that took effect on 1 January 2026 under the Stamp Duty (Rates of Duty) (No. 2) Regulations, 2025. A lease of up to five years carries 5% of the average annual rent, a lease of more than five and up to ten years 10%, and a longer lease 20%. A mortgage of land carries 1% of the sum secured up to CI$300,000 and 1.5% above that.

The Schedule also carries the concessions for Caymanian buyers, inserted by the Stamp Duty (Rates of Duty) Regulations, 2025, made in Cabinet on 24 January 2025. A Caymanian buying a first home alone pays no duty if the price is CI$550,000 or less, 3.75% on the slice between CI$550,000 and CI$650,000, and the full 7.5% rate above that. For bare land the thresholds are CI$250,000 and CI$350,000, and for two to ten Caymanians buying a home together they are CI$600,000 and CI$700,000. A Caymanian buying a second property with a building pays 3.75% up to CI$600,000. Answering a parliamentary question from Dwayne Seymour MP on 30 September 2026, Rolston Anglin MP, Minister for Finance and Economic Development, said 573 waivers had been approved for Caymanian buyers between 1 May 2025 and 31 August 2026, "providing stamp duty relief of CI$10,308,536".

Section 4 of the Act makes the Minister of Finance "ex officio Commissioner for the collection of stamp duty", and section 5 lets the Commissioner authorise any government officer to perform that function. Mr Anglin is therefore the Commissioner. The department's website states that the minister "has delegated responsibility to the Lands & Survey Department for the Assessment and collection of Stamp Duty" on all documents relating to immovable property. The department answers to Jay Ebanks MP, Minister for Planning, Lands, Agriculture, Housing and Infrastructure.

Collection works at the counter. The department's website says duty "is payable upon execution of the document, and should be presented to the Lands & Survey Department immediately thereafter". The department assesses the amount, the customer pays it, and the document is stamped. Payment is "a joint liability of all parties to a document", the website says, and the department "reserve[s] the right to recover Stamp Duty from each and any party". Interest "will be incurred from the 46th day after execution", the website says, with the clock paused while the department holds the documents for assessment; it "will recommence after we have notified you of an amount of Duty outstanding". The first column of the schedule records the date of the department's first email on each item.

Where the amount is in doubt, the document is "presented for adjudication". Section 9 requires the Commissioner, as adjudicator, to assess it within 15 days on payment of a fee, set in the Schedule at 1% of the sum adjudicated with a minimum of CI$1 and a maximum of CI$1,000. Section 21 then gives the owner seven days to pay, and until the document is stamped it "shall remain in the custody of the adjudicator".

What the schedule shows

The earliest dated item is 15 November 2023 and the latest 23 September 2026. The request had asked for a breakdown covering each of the last five years.

The money is concentrated at the top. The 27 items of CI$10,000 or more total CI$1,023,858.92, which is 88% of everything owed. The three largest are CI$112,566, first emailed on 29 April 2026; CI$112,500, first emailed on 10 September 2026; and CI$109,565, first emailed on 21 July 2026. Four items emailed on a single day, 1 September 2026, come to CI$174,395 between them, the largest of them CI$92,000. At the other end, 79 of the 176 items are for CI$100 or less and together come to CI$3,843.51. Nineteen of those are for less than a dollar, the smallest CI$0.09, and total CI$5.24.

By year of first email, two items date from 2023 (CI$24,375), five from 2024 (CI$39,614), 51 from 2025 (CI$178,005.93) and 117 from 2026 (CI$906,132.61). The 176th item, for CI$9,215 with a due date of 4 September 2026, carries a first-email date reading "0-Jan-00", which the covering letter does not explain. The 36 items first emailed in September 2026 alone total CI$415,335.97, more than a third of the whole. The schedule also carries 14 rows marked only "1st advisory" with no date and no amount; they add nothing to the total, and the letter does not explain them either.

The oldest debts

The schedule does not define "1st advisory", and it has no column for interest, enforcement or referral. The ten entries that carry something other than "1st advisory" in the status column are among the oldest, and their notes describe reminders and customer responses rather than enforcement. One 2025 item of CI$1,600 records a part payment, with a balance of CI$1,300. The largest item from before 2025, CI$33,732 first emailed on 15 July 2024, carries "1st advisory" and nothing else.

The oldest, CI$16,875 first emailed on 15 November 2023, records a second email on 10 February 2025 and "no response from customer", then a call on 24 February 2025 in which the customer "requested for a 6 month payment plan" and was "told customer Finance manager would have to approve or not". A CI$7,500 item first emailed on 28 November 2023 records reminders on 7 March 2024, 9 September 2024 and 10 February 2025 and the note "customer sent stamp duty invoice to client / no response".

Two items from 20 January 2025, for CI$5,283 and CI$17,279, carry the note "Client not going through with Sale". A CI$3,420 item from 11 December 2024 records that the "client discontinued with lease". A CI$660.08 item records that the "Client waiting to receive MOF waiver letter", and a CI$1,493 item from 28 March 2024 records "awaiting MOF waiver letter". A CI$255 item from 19 February 2025 is marked "CALLED CUSTOMER MULTIPLE TIMES AND NO ANSWER - NO EMAIL ON SUBMISSION FORM". Nothing in the schedule records interest being charged on any item, a civil claim filed, or a prosecution brought.

What the law says happens when duty is not paid

Section 20(1) requires an instrument to be stamped "at the time of its execution", and section 20(2) allows 45 days for it to be stamped or presented for adjudication. For a land transfer, section 20(3) puts the duty on the buyer to have the transfer stamped within 45 days of the seller signing it.

Once duty is due, section 3(2) makes it "recoverable as civil debts at the suit of the Commissioner". Section 22 charges interest "at ten % per annum for the first month or part of a month and thereafter at the rate of twenty % per annum upon the total amount of the duty so remaining unpaid".

If an unstamped document reaches court, section 23 requires the person relying on it in a civil case to stamp it up "with twice the amount of the deficiency", and in any criminal case the document "shall be impounded" and sent to the Commissioner. Section 24 requires every public officer who receives a document they have reason to believe is chargeable with duty and "either unstamped or under-stamped" to "impound the same and forward it to the Commissioner", and to let the Commissioner inspect any records that "may lead to the discovery of evasion or omission of payment".

Section 29 makes a list of acts criminal offences. Among them are contravening the stamping provisions, including section 20, "with intent to defraud"; presenting an unstamped document for registration "with intent to defraud"; making a false statement to avoid or reduce duty; and, without any requirement of intent, failing to comply with the 45-day rule for land transfers in section 20(3). A public officer who "knowingly records or registers" an unstamped document also commits an offence. Section 30 sets the penalty: a person convicted "is liable on summary conviction to a fine of five hundred thousand dollars and to imprisonment for five years". Where a company commits the offence with the consent or neglect of a director or officer, that person is liable as well. Section 31 allows the Governor to suspend or terminate the licence of an attorney, bank, accountant, agent, broker or estate agent convicted under section 29. Sections 6 and 7 let the Commissioner demand information and records from any person on not less than 30 days' notice, and hold an inquiry at which evidence may be taken on oath.

The same Act also provides room for discretion. Section 20(6) allows the Commissioner at any time to "waive, refund or abate the whole or part of the duty payable" or to extend any time limit, and section 22 allows the Commissioner "for good cause" to waive all or part of the interest. The schedule does not show whether any "MOF waiver letter" note resulted in a waiver, or whether interest has been waived or simply not charged. Nor does it say whether every item is a document presented for stamping and left unpaid, or whether some were never presented at all, and it does not say how many items are land transfers. The offence in section 29 that needs no intent is the failure to comply with section 20(3), which concerns land transfers alone.

What it means for the Treasury, and for Caymanians

Stamp duty on land transfers is one of the government's largest revenue lines. The government's unaudited report for the six months to 30 June 2026, gazetted on 7 August, shows it raised CI$80.9 million in the half-year, CI$22 million more than budgeted and CI$32.7 million more than in the same period of 2025, out of total revenues of CI$856.2 million. The report says the variance "reflected the stamp duty rate increase from 7.5% to 10% effective 1 January 2026, as well as higher transaction volumes and property values". The department reported CI$130.3 million collected on property documents in 2025, which it said beat the budget projection of CI$79.5 million by CI$50.8 million. When Parliament passed the 10% rate in December 2025, the government's broadcaster reported that the increase was expected to raise a further CI$11.7 million in 2026.

The Office of the Auditor General has not reported on stamp duty arrears, and its general report on the 2024 financial audits, published in October 2025, does not mention stamp duty. That report does say the Entire Public Sector accounts for 2021 to 2024 remain unaudited and that "management (government) is unable to provide assurances on the completeness and accuracy of over $1 billion in coercive revenue (representing approximately 70% of total EPS revenue)", the category in which the government's own half-year report places stamp duty on land transfers. Bermuda's Auditor General, by contrast, published the Office of the Tax Commissioner's outstanding stamp duty by year in a report on government receivables dated 31 August 2026 and tabled in the House of Assembly on 25 September: BD$4,773,565 for 2025, BD$3,902,267 for 2024 and BD$3,899,529 for 2023, all of it recorded as a year old or less.

The same revenue line pays for the concessions. The half-year report records "foregone revenues" of CI$4.7 million in the second quarter alone and names "stamp duty waivers for Caymanian property buyers" among them, and the Minister's answer of 30 September puts the relief granted to Caymanian buyers since May 2025 at CI$10,308,536. The Act charges the duty "for the revenue of the Islands", the general fund from which government spending is met.

The same rules reach a Caymanian renting an apartment or buying a first home. A lease of up to five years carries duty of 5% of the average annual rent, a first-home transfer carries the tiered rates above, and the department's website says interest runs from the 46th day after signing. The schedule shows items first emailed in November 2023 that were still open when it was released on 2 October 2026, with no interest recorded. The CI$1,157,342.54 outstanding is equivalent to about 1.4% of the CI$80.9 million collected on land transfers in the first half of this year, but the schedule does not record how much of it will be paid, how much is in dispute, or how much relates to sales that did not complete.

What remains open

The record leaves five open questions. It does not say whether the schedule is the department's complete record of unpaid duty or an operational list of documents lodged for stamping. It does not define "1st advisory" or say what step follows it. It does not show whether interest under section 22 has been charged on any item, or whether any item has been referred for civil recovery under section 3(2) or to the police under section 29. It does not say how many of the "MOF waiver letter" notes ended in a waiver under section 20(6). And it does not say why a schedule released in answer to a request for five years of figures begins in November 2023.