The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) is finding it tough to meet its target of collecting Rs 4,000 crore as property tax for the 2022-23 fiscal as against the current collection of 2,600 crores so far.
Tushar Giri Nath BBMP chief commissioner said, “We will surely end the financial year by collecting more than what we had in the last financial year, the goal is to meet the Rs 4,000 crore. The entire machinery was busy with electoral roll duties in the past month or so, but the focus will be back on tax collection”.
BBMP had revealed data on November 25, that the civic body collected Rs 2,641 crore as property tax from four categories of buildings – residential, non-residential, and residential-plus plus no-residential and industrial.
Among the measures, it has put in place to increase collection are the identification of properties through the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (Bescom) database, recovery of taxes from malls, and review of a percentage of self-assessment affidavits.
The Palike has collected more than Rs 11,000 crore in property tax in the last four years.
Palike is already working on identifying the defaulters through various means. Previously the civic body was collecting tax from property owners under the provision of rules of section 108 (a) of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations (KMC) Act, 1976, which allow the civic body the power to only seize movable properties of defaulters.
Now the tax is being collected under section 144 of the BBMP Act, 2020, which provides power to the Palike to seize the movable, immovable properties and bank accounts of tax defaulters.
Giri Nath said, “We are collecting the property details from Bescom, as they have several properties that are not in our database. Also, wherever OCs (occupation certificates) have been issued, we need to look at why there is no Khata”. They are gearing up for proactive property tax collecting from December 25 or early January and are confident of collecting at least another Rs 1,000 crore by then.
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