What Kenal Stamps Automates — and What You Still Review

Kenal Stamps is a workflow platform, not a replacement for legal or tax judgment. This page explains exactly what we handle automatically and where your team remains responsible.

What Kenal Stamps automates

When you upload a contract, Kenal Stamps does the following on your behalf:

• PDF text extraction — we parse contract documents to identify key fields relevant to stamp duty (parties, effective dates, consideration amounts, duration, instrument type).
• LHDN field pre-fill — extracted values are mapped into the fields LHDN expects for STSDS submission.
• Duty calculation — we calculate base duty using current Stamp Act rates, apply duplicate-copy duty where relevant, and add late-stamping penalties if applicable.
• STSDS submission — once your team confirms, we submit the contract to LHDN through the Self-Assessment Stamp Duty System on your behalf.
• Certificate retrieval — we fetch the stamp certificate from LHDN when submission completes.
• Retention and storage — certificates, source documents, and submission metadata are stored for the statutory retention period.

What you review

Before any contract is submitted to LHDN, your team is responsible for:

• Verifying extracted contract values — dates, amounts, party names, and terms must be checked against the source document. Extraction is good, but it is not infallible.
• Contract type classification — confirming that the contract has been categorized correctly (employment vs tenancy vs general, etc.). Incorrect classification leads to incorrect duty.
• Duty total confirmation — checking the calculated duty before confirming submission. If something looks wrong, do not submit.
• Exemption eligibility — for qualifying employment contracts, verifying that the exemption criteria genuinely apply.
• Legal and tax judgment — if you are unsure whether a document should be stamped, or how, consult your legal or tax advisor before using the workflow.

Known limitations

Kenal Stamps works well for standard contract formats, but there are cases where manual intervention is needed:

• Non-standard contract formats — templates that differ significantly from common market formats may need manual field entry after extraction.
• Scanned PDFs without an OCR layer — image-only PDFs cannot be extracted; you will need to provide machine-readable text or re-enter fields manually.
• Untemplated instruments — instruments that are not yet defined as a document type (unusual deeds, specialized agreements) need to be added to the document types system before they can be stamped. Contact us if your instrument is not yet supported.
• Post-issuance document amendments — once a stamp certificate has been issued, genuine document amendments may still require LHDN action. Contact support and our team will work the case with you and LHDN — you do not need to handle it directly.

When to escalate

• Contact support when the workflow behaves unexpectedly, a submission fails, or extraction pulls incorrect fields and you want help diagnosing why.
• Fix it yourself when you just need to edit a field, change the contract type, or re-upload a corrected document — you have full control over all inputs before confirming.
• Seek legal or tax advice when you are uncertain whether a contract is liable for stamp duty, how it should be classified, or whether an exemption applies. Kenal Stamps does not provide legal advice.

Related pages

• Contract Lifecycle — the eight statuses and what each means
• How Duty Is Calculated — base duty, duplicates, and penalties
• How Kenal Stamps Fits the STSDS / MyTax Workflow — the regulatory context