A special squad of officials from the revenue and engineering wings of the city Corporation will be constituted to check unauthorised constructions inside the vast premises of clubs and hospitals in the city. Faced with a fall in revenues, the local body has been looking at all avenues of tax collection that have remained untapped.
“When new constructions are carried out in clubs and hospitals having large plots, without obtaining the necessary permit from the Corporation, it often fails to come to our notice. The drive that we are planning from next week is to check on such cases. If such buildings are found, they will be marked as unauthorised and the tax for such buildings will be three times the normal tax amount,” said Revenue Officer V.Sreekumar.
The Corporation has the records of assessed plinth areas of each of these institutions. The new assessments will be compared with the old records to check whether there are violations.
In the case of several private institutions in the city, including shopping complexes, hospitals and clubs, the Corporation has been unable to collect all the tax amount due to it, as many of these have been stuck in litigation for the past few years.
For instance, a case regarding tax assessment of a shopping complex has been pending in the High Court since 2013. When the building was completed and the tax was assessed, the owners went to the tribunal citing that the assessment was done according to the old rules, due to which the amount was high. The tribunal ruled in favour of the building owners. It was ruled that the parking area should also be exempted from the assessment. The Corporation filed an appeal, which has been pending.
In the case of a hospital in the city, tax is being collected only for its old building, while that related to the new building is stuck in litigation. A club in the city has also gone to the court against the high tax rates as per the new assessment.
