Decoupling Is No Longer a Property Hack: What the Courts and IRAS Have Made Clear

Now we have more clarification on decoupling, and it’s no longer the simple hack many of us were told to think.

For most of the ‘00s to ‘10s, decoupling was positioned as a property hack to avoid paying Additional Buyers Stamp Duty (ABSD). The concept is simple: One spouse transfers their share of the home to the other, and thus no longer owns property. This then allows them to go off and buy a property under their own name, with no ABSD, and the family effectively ends up with two properties.

This even used to be possible for HDB flat owners, right up till 2016 (from that point on, decoupling for HDB flats has only been allowed for exceptional cases, such as divorce).

But with recent cases and commentary from the courts and IRAS, the picture has become much sharper; and decoupling is no longer a neat workaround. Authorities are making clear that it’s only for a genuine transfer…