BANGALORE: All property tax defaulters
who, for instance, have claimed their four-storied house as two-storied
in the self-assessment scheme have to face the music now. The Palike is
set to verify the tax paid by such defaulters through its random
checks.

BBMP commissioner Siddaiah has set a deadline of one more month for his officials to track property tax
defaulters across the city and recover dues of Rs 1,000 crore. “People
have suppressed facts from the BBMP on the extent of their properties,”
he said.

Siddaiah told the BBMP council on Wednesday that there
are 3.25 lakh tax defaulters in the city who owe the Palike more than
Rs 786 crore. “If we levy 2 % penalty per month on each of them, we can
mop up about Rs 1,000 crore,” he said.

Citing the example of a
tech park and a five-star hotel which are among the property tax
defaulters, the commissioner said, “A five-star hotel in the central
business district has undervalued the extent of its property and paid Rs
26 lakh as against the actual Rs 87 lakh. A tech park that houses more
than 12,000 people has declared its total area as 11 lakh sq ft, whereas
it’s spread across 27 lakh sqft of area. We have given them 15 days to
pay dues of Rs 60 crore. If they do not fall in line, we know what to
do,” he said.

Siddaiah also spoke about BBMP’s delay in issuing
khatas to thousands of property owners because of which many are not
under the tax net. “In outer zones, most of the recently built group
housing complexes haven’t got khata and therefore pay no tax. We must
look into this issue,” he said.

“Ideally, after introducing the
self-assessment scheme (SAS), we should have started rigorous
verification of tax paid and the actual extent of properties. But that
wasn’t done. Now everyone in the BBMP, including its chief engineers,
executive engineers and even the special commissioner, has been roped in
to re-assess the property tax paid,” he said.