Property tax to be levied on vacant plots now Assetventures

LUDHIANA: The local bodies department has started its exercise to levy property tax on city residents, for which officers of the local bodies department held a meeting with their counterparts in municipal corporation (MC) on Monday.

In the meeting that was presided over by additional commissioner Kanwalpreet Kaur Brar and attended by officers of the house tax branch and department representative BR Gupta, a proposal regarding a transparent system under which residents could assess the tax on their property themselves was mulled over.

Talking to TOI, Gupta said the purpose of the meeting was to evolve a strategy for implementation of the tax in a transparent way. The department proposed that the tax would be levied on self-assessment basis under which the person who has to pay the tax would assess his property and himself turn up to the civic authorities on a monthly or annual basis to pay the tax. If he fails to do so, he could be charged 11 times more than the tax.

Sources revealed that the department is considering the idea to levy tax in the state on the lines of that in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Jaipur. According to this pattern, the state would levy tax on plots and constructed houses in the cities on the basis of cost of its construction and that of the land.

Meanwhile, Gupta also asked the civic body officers to give the figure regarding tax collected in the last and present financial years from rented commercial properties. This move was taken to understand feasibility of any new taxes to be levied.

At present, though the state has levied 15% of annual rental value (AVR) on the buildings used for commercial purposes, it is not charging any tax on vacant plots.

MCD property tax amnesty scheme has few takers

Assetventures
The property tax amnesty scheme launched by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to encourage tax defaulters to pay up their dues

failed to people. Only 27,000 property owners came forward to pay their dues even as the civic agency was expecting at least 20 lakh people to turn up.

Meanwhile, looking at the dismal response, the civic agency decided to extend the date for the amnesty scheme to December 31 the last date before this was October 31. According to MCD officials, all those who fail to pay their property tax by December 31 will be issued showcause notices. Defaulters will have to face harsh penalties like sealing of bank accounts, attachment or auctioning of property and even prison terms, the officials said.

"We were expecting more people to file their property tax as there are approximately 30 lakh properties in the city while only 7.5-9 lakh people pay their tax. We have data on property owners and will issue showcause notices to them. Their properties can be auctioned if they failed to pay up by December 31,'' said MCD commissioner K S Mehra.

The amnesty scheme was launched to get such owners in the tax-net. "We have received Rs 70 crore as property tax from 27,000 people. The Survey of India is also conducting a survey to determine all those property owners who are not in the tax net of the civic agency,'' said an MCD official. The survey was completed in northeast district recently and around 3.5 lakh properties for which tax was not paid were identified in the area, the official said.

"We received a large number of representations from resident welfare associations (RWAs) who said they could not avail of the scheme due to the festive season. They had requested us to extend the last date for paying the tax,'' said Ram Kishan Singhal, chairman of the standing committee.

The civic agency had said that all those who remained defaulters after December 31 would have to pay a penalty of 30%. In addition to this, 1% interest will be levied every month till the amount is finally paid.