The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has received a lot of flak for not being able to collect property tax from many property owners, especially those who own high-value properties, in the city. Though attempts have been made to recover dues, the BBMP has not achieved much success.
To address this issue, the civic body has now proposed to set up a cell that will be dedicated to collecting property tax from high value properties. The formation of this cell is likely to be announced in BBMP’s 2014-15 budget that will be presented on February 17 by chairperson of Standing Committee for Taxation and Finance M.S. Shivaprasad.
According to highly placed sources in the BBMP, there are more than 2,000 high value properties in the city. The tax from just these properties can come up to Rs. 3,000 crore. However, the total tax collection in the BBMP is not even Rs. 2,000 crore. Sources attributed this to “inefficiency of the present official machinery”.
Sources said the new cell — High Value Property Tax Recovery Cell — would consist of a team of officials to exclusively recover all the pending dues, besides the property tax for the current fiscal. The cell is being set up under provisions of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964. “As per the Act, the cell can include a tahsildar, shirestedar and a few other revenue officials who are empowered to recover tax dues,” sources added.
The BBMP will now have to first adopt the Karnataka Land Revenue Act and then constitute the cell, as there is no provision under the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976 for such a cell.
Sources in the BBMP’s told The Hindu that once the cell is constituted, all the 16 lakh properties mapped under geographical information system (GIS) could be brought under the tax net. “This will naturally mean that the civic body’s revenue will increase,” sources added.
