The Madras High Court on Wednesday expressed serious concern over Greater Chennai Corporation not having revised the rates of property tax since 1998 and consequently suffering to generate the revenue required for improving civic amenities in the city besides not being able to employ adequate hands to keep the city neat and clean.
Justices N. Kirubakaran and P. Velmurugan said, the common man was the ultimate sufferer due to the inaction of successive State governments on the issue of revision of property tax rates. The judges observed in their order that ruling parties had deliberately omitted to revise the taxes “for their political interests” and with elections in mind.
The observations were made in an interim order passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by advocate V.B.R. Menon accusing the Corporation of not following a transparent and uniform method for determining quantum of tax to be collected and instead ending up collecting much lesser amount from corporates and commercial establishments.
Pointing out that the law requires revision of tax rates once in every five years, the Bench said, such revisions in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018 would have augmented the income of the civic body multifold. Since the government had failed to do so, the court had taken the task upon itself and ordered revision of property tax rates in 2018.
That order too was passed by a Division Bench led by Justice Kirubakaran on July 17, 2018, and within two days, a government order was issued for revising the property tax for residential buildings by not more than 50% and for rented residential buildings by not more than 100 per cent. Similarly, the taxes were revised for non residential buildings by 100 per cent.
Despite doing so, the government took a quick u-turn and suspended the revision since the elections to civic bodies had to be conducted. It also constituted a three-member committee to look into issues relating to revision. Wondering what happened to the committee, the judges ordered that its report should be submitted at the earliest.
Further, the judges ordered action against “ corrupt” corporation officials who end up levying less taxes on commercial establishments and directed the Municipal Administration Secretary as well as Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner to appear before the court on Thursday to answer a series of questions posed by the court.
The judges wanted to know the quantum of property tax collected pursuant to the revision made in 1998, the yearly collection before the 2018 revision, the amount collected pursuant to the revision and till it was suspended, the reason for suspending the revision and by when would the three-member committee submit its recommendations.
The other questions posed by the Bench were: “How many shopping malls, IT corridors and commercial complexes are situated in Chennai? What was the amount levied on those buildings? How much was collected? What would have been the property tax collection in case revision done in 2003, 2008 and 2013?
“Whether all civic amenities are being provided to the extended areas of Greater Chennai? and how many cases of levy of lesser tax for commercial buildings have been so far deducted?”
