The publication of the list of property tax defaulters by the city Corporation was expected to lead to a flurry of complaints and objections. However, though more than 70% of the data has been published, the number of complaints have remained less than 30 till now.
Consequently, the civic body postponed the property tax adalat, which it had scheduled for Monday, expecting a large number of complaints from across the wards.
The property tax collection issue came to the fore following a controversy over misappropriation of funds by some officials in zonal offices of the Corporation.
Software issues
The debates over this also revealed the issues concerning the Sanchaya software used for property tax collection.
Some of the payments made offline as well as online were not getting reflected in the online system, as these were not being updated on the same day.
The system has also been plagued with issues, including database discrepancies. These technical issues are being corrected and the database cleaned up for each ward.
For current year
The Corporation has over the past few weeks been publishing the list of tax defaulters from each ward, including those who have pending tax payments for the second half of the current year.
As on Tuesday, the lists for 71 wards have been published.
A total of 22 complaints have so far been received under the main office, while four complaints were received at the Kazhakuttam zone.
The Corporation will organise an adalat to take up these few complaints in the coming weeks, as it had already made an announcement for an adalat.
On higher amount
Those who have objections to the tax defaulters’ list published can file their complaints online or at the Corporation office.
The complaint can either be about tax paid not being reflected in the database or about higher amounts than expected being demanded as tax.
A majority of the complaints till now have been about higher tax amounts being demanded, according to Corporation officials.
Meanwhile, property tax collections at the Corporation have witnessed a major jump in the past two months, after the tax database clean-up process and the publication of list of defaulters began.
