The Hindu 06.11.2013
GVMC to continue drive against tax leakage
Property tax is the main source of income for municipal
corporations and unless leakages are plugged it is difficult to get more
revenue. The GVMC has started one such exercise and having realised its
efficacy wants to continue it.
At a recent meeting
when the issue of granting funds to municipal corporations was raised,
the Chief Minister too expressed the view that municipalities should be
able raise their resources though statutory grants would be released.
The
annual increase in property tax of the GVMC on an average is Rs. 5
crore. Several corporations have been able to raise their property tax
revenue. Compared to them, the corporation has not realised its
potential and not able to collect what it should have, says Municipal
Commissioner M.V. Satyanarayana.
The Bangalore
Municipal Corporation, on the other hand, carried out the Geographic
Information System (GIS) mapping to assess property tax by using the
services of 400 outsourced persons and carried out an exercise for more
than two-and-a-half years. Base maps of the National Remote Sensing
Centre were used in the GIS exercise. After the GIS exercise, camps were
organised in the wards to enable citizens compare and contest the tax
arrived at. On the other hand, GVMC’s experiments with the GIS had not
yielded the expected result. After the GIS, a verification carried out
revealed that several star hotels and malls have been under-assessed.
