The Times of India             25.01.2014

250 new properties found evading property tax

Kolhapur: The civic body has found 250 new property owners to be evading taxes. They have not registered with the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation's property tax department.

The drive against property tax defaulters was started in December last year and is expected to be completed by the end of 2014. The contract for assessing properties has been given to Surve Infotech - a city based IT Enabled Service providing company.

The company's director Shantaram Surve said, "The drive is being conducted to bring properties under the ambit of the property tax department and increase the civic body's revenue."

The civic administration is going to issue notices to the owners of the 250 properties and ask them to pay their taxes for the period since construction. The database of properties registered earlier with the department has now been provided to the company. It is now conducting its scrutiny by comparing tax receipts with the property sizes.

In a first phase of the assessment, the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation has identified 250 new properties which are not registered with the property tax department and are found evading the tax.

The drive was started in December last year and is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The contract for assessment of the properties has been given to Surve Infotech- a city based IT Enabled Service providing company.

Shantaram Surve, director of the company said, "We have found 250 new properties the owners of which do not have any receipts for the payment of the property tax. The drive will help to find out such properties and the civic administration will bring them under the ambit of the property tax which will increase its revenue."

The civic administration is going to issue the notices to the owners of these properties and will appeal them to pay the tax for the period since the construction is completed. The earlier database of the properties which are registered with the department have been provided to the company which is now scrutinizing all the properties by cross checking the property tax receipts and the size of the property.

According to the database, there are around 1.25 lakh properties in the city which are registered with the department. "Along with finding new properties we are also scrutinizing the registered ones and therefore to cover all these properties, it will take time of about a year. The last such census of properties was conducted a couple of years ago," added Surve.

According to the civic administration, the data generated from the drive will help them to map the city digitally. The system will have the details such as identification number of the every household, detailed address of the property and the owners name, utility connections, and size of the property on the basis of number of floors, built-up and carpet area.