It is nearly a decade since the Mangaluru City Corporation introduced the self-assessment scheme (SAS) for paying property tax. But the system of paying tax online is yet to be in force.
The corporation switched over to SAS for paying property tax from the annual rental value method in 2008-09.
In the eighth year of introducing the new method, property owners still fill the manual form to pay the tax. The owners have been forced to pay the tax either at Mangalore One centres or at bank branches standing in a queue.
“It is strange that when a big corporation like the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has enabled online payment of property tax, a small corporation like Mangaluru is still not bothered about doing it,” Ganapathi B., a resident of Gorigudda, said.
If there was an online payment system, software itself calculated the amount of tax to be paid. It helped many tax payers pay it easily.
Software
Raju Mogaveera, Deputy Commissioner (Revenue), at the corporation told The Hindu that the municipal reforms cell under the Directorate of Municipal Administration was developing a software suitable for all city corporations, other than the BBMP, for payment of property tax. It was expected to be ready by this year-end.
Consultative meetings to this effect had been conducted with officials. Once the government software would be ready, the corporations would have to feed the basic data of property owners first before enabling payment online, he said.
Mr. Mogaveera said that the corporation achieved 85.3 per cent success in the collection of property tax in 2015-16. It collected Rs. 47.47 crore tax against the total demand of Rs. 55.65 crore in the last financial year. There were 1.95 lakh properties for assessment in the city.
“The 15 per cent tax pending to be collected is cumulative. It is not the balance amount pending to be paid by specific property owners,” he added.
The corporation switched to SAS for property tax from the annual rental value method in 2008-09
