Deccan Herald                26.04.2013

Property taxpayers face tough time in poll season

City residents who want to pay property tax are facing deserted ward-level offices of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike. A majority of the personnel attached to these offices have been drafted for poll duty.

The civic agency has set April 30 as the deadline to avail five per cent rebate on property tax. However, many taxpayers have not been able to pay the tax as the ward-level offices have very few or no staff at all. The situation has turned so bad that a tax collection point in Jayamahal Park was closed for a few hours on Friday for lack of staff.

“A tax inspector in the ward office has been hospitalised after he met with an accident. The other one is on election duty and his timings are uncertain. Tax inspector is the only person authorised to sign the computer-generated receipts after property tax returns are accepted with payments,” Shreyar V, a resident of Jayamahal said. He said the citizens were facing the problem for the past two weeks. Since the tax is paid on self-assessment, many citizens need assistance in filling up the forms.

Sukumar R, a resident of Vijayanagar said apart from staff crunch, technical snags also hit tax collection centres quite often. “A few days ago, service personnel took away the computer and printer from a tax collection centre here, presumably for repairs. This resulted in delay of few more days,” he added.

Having no way, many taxpayers are making a beeline for BangaloreOne centres to pay property tax. However, the staff at BOne centres are not well trained in tax collection and the citizens continue to face problems here too.

A senior official from the Palike told Deccan Herald that the staff crunch at the tax collection centres has been brought to the notice of the Election Commission. He, however, said the problem would continue till the completion of the election.

Chief Electoral Officer Anil Kumar Jha said the Election Commission itself had been facing staff crunch for poll duties. He, however, added that the district election officers had been asked to ensure that essential services were not disrupted in the name of election duty.