Residents and traders who have constructed unauthorised buildings are
under the scanner, as the Chennai Corporation has taken yet another
initiative to trace property tax revenue loss.

Three areas

Starting
Wednesday, the Corporation will send teams to inspect a total of 8,747
buildings in ward 57 in George Town, 10,414 buildings in ward 136 in
T.Nagar and 6,076 buildings in ward 173 in Mylapore, measuring the
structures, compiling data on total built up area and other town
planning parameters.

The data will be compared with the database
of the Chennai Corporation Revenue Department that collects property
tax, trace licence and company tax. “The data on additional floors or
unauthorised construction will be used to estimate the actual revenue
loss of property tax. Under-assessment of property tax remains a
challenge. Many homes and commercial buildings are paying less tax,
causing huge loss of revenue,” said an official.

GIS mapping

As
part of the initiative, the Chennai Corporation will also use GIS
mapping of the private buildings on Wednesday, in addition to survey by
the teams.

The GIS mapping will also cover all the private
property and civic utilities. Even as the drive is done for increasing
tax revenue, this initiative is expected to generate huge data
sufficient to expose the exact number of unauthorised buildings in the
city after the completion of the project,” said an official.