The Hindu               20.08.2013

Pay property tax at banks now

Staff Reporter

No more serpentine queues; no need to spend a large part of the working day in the city corporation offices. Bangaloreans can now walk into branches of select banks and pay their property tax.

On Monday, Mayor D. Venkatesh Murthy inaugurated the facility at IDBI Bank on Mission Road and Corporation Bank on J.C. Road.

50 bank branches

To begin with, citizens can pay their property tax through 50 bank branches across the city. By October, the facility will be extended to 350 branches.

The BBMP has tied up with 13 banks — IDBI Bank, Corporation Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Canara Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Indian Overseas Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, Yes Bank, Indian Bank and IndusInd Bank.

“The civic body wants to make property tax payment easy. Citizens can now pay taxes online using their debit/ credit cards as well. To pay their taxes, citizens will have to key in their property identity numbers and RR numbers. Once done, the details of their property will be available. The bank will also verify to ensure that the tax has been remitted for the correct property,” he said.

I. Ramakanth, BBMP’s Deputy Commissioner (Revenue), said that of the 16 lakh properties in the city, the BBMP had verified the PID issued to over 13 lakh properties. The validation of the remaining properties would be completed in two months.

The BBMP, through the nationalised and private banks, will also be offering mobile payment facilities. This will be helpful to citizens to pay their property tax. A senior official added that the zonal commissioners will identify huge apartment complexes where the mobile vans can go to collect the taxes.

Mobile vans

“We will go to the citizens even before they come to the BBMP to pay their taxes. To begin with, each zone will have three or four mobile vans where payment can be made,” he added.

Hassle-free payment

IDBI’s head for South India Mythili Balasubramaniam said that if there is demand for the facility, the bank may open a separate counter for hassle-free payment of property tax.

Additional Commissioner (Finance) R. Kiran and Technical Adviser T. Sheshadri were present.

The BBMP, through nationalised and private banks, will also be offering mobile payment facilities.

The Hindu               17.08.2013

Civic body eyes higher property tax revenue

Special Correspondent

Government asks civic body to reassess properties in the twin cities for revised tax

The government has directed the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to reassess properties in the twin cities for revised tax at the earliest, considering that self-assessment of property tax was carried out 15 years ago.

Principal Secretaries of the Department of Municipal Administration & Urban Development S.K. Joshi and Adhar Sinha on Friday held a review meeting on the GHMC works where they directed officials to bring each and every property under the tax net by utilising the services of various functionaries.

In his presentation, GHMC Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu said that 330 bill collectors and 50 tax inspectors were involved in collecting the tax. Till August 7, the collection has been Rs. 288.81 crore compared to Rs. 245.52 crore during the corresponding period last year, i.e., around Rs. 43.29 crore more, he said.

The Principal Secretaries assured the GHMC on settling issues such as recovery of service tax from Railways and other departments and speedy release of the funds promised by the government. Mr. Krishna Babu was also asked to take up the much delayed Charminar Pedestrianisation Project immediately.

All the field-level functionaries utilising the services of Off Site Real Time (OSRT) system were directed to capture the functions of the corporation and upload the information on GHMC website, irrespective of their department.

Responding to a request for a separate tribunal for Town Planning, the senior officials observed that there should be a single integrated tribunal to sort out various issues of GHMC instead of having one for each subject.