Bengaluru civic body to slap defaulters with notice to collect taxes

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Chief Gaurav Gupta on September 23 instructed the BBMP officials to issue notices to property tax defaulters in all eight zones of the civic body and collect the tax immediately.  Speaking at the meeting on property tax, he said that assistant revenue officials must pay attention to collecting property tax. Notice should be issued to defaulters in ward limits and take measures to collect taxes immediately. Earlier, the civic body also planned to launch ‘Khata Mela’ to collect the property taxes.

According to the BBMP, the target for the current financial year is to collect Rs 4,000 crore property tax and until Thursday (September 23) had collected 53% amounting to Rs 2,141 crore. The civic body Commissioner in this regard urged the officials to reach the set target.

Gupta directed the officers from Revenue department to issue notices to defaulters in ward limits according to the list of assets with pending tax and collect it [the tax].

According to the BBMP data, until now they have received only 50% of the taxes from each zone. The highest amount was collected from Mahadevapura zone which came to Rs 524 crore and the lowest amount was collected from Dasarahalli zone amounting to Rs 60.57 crore.

The directive to the officials comes amidst the recent row which was sparked when tax payers received notices by the civic body over an alleged mismatch in the tax zone classification. Over 78,000 notices were sent to property owners who were asked to pay the tax difference, penalty and interest for four years as the BBMP claimed that a zonal reclassification was done in 2016-17.

Large numbers of property owners protested against the notices, they said that they were not informed of the reclassification nor did it reflect on the BBMP tax portal. Following the same, the civic agency sent a proposal to the State government seeking waiver of penalty. Government decision is yet to be made in this matter.