With the objective of increasing property tax collection, which has
failed to reach the desired target owing to tax evasion, the Vijayapura
City Corporation has decided to adopt a modern method to augment tax
collection.

The corporation has obtained a special software which
will allot unique identity number to property and help in automatically
assessing tax paid to the corporation by property owners.

Corporation
commissioner Harsha Shetty, who has got the software developed, said
that while the actual collection of property tax should be at least Rs.
20 crore annually, owing to various lacuna, it was only Rs. 9 crore.

He
said that according to a survey conducted in 2006, the city had 96,000
registered property with 68,000 of having individual water tap
connection.

“Interestingly, Hubballi Electricity Supply Company
says that it has provided electricity connection to 1.6 lakh property.
It means that there is disparity in the number of property. We have now
decided to give unique number to each property, both authorised and
unauthorised (not constructed as per norms),” he said.

He
said that tax is being collected only from 65 % of the total property,
while the rest of them have not been paying tax for years.

About
the software, Mr. Shetty said that once data of all property is
uploaded, it would be easy to get details of specific property based on
the unique property number.

“Based on that, it
would be easy to calculate tax paid or tax yet to be paid. We can ask
property owners to pay tax if they have not paid it. In case owners
continue to evade tax, then water supply could be disconnected,” he
said.

Stating that the process is still under way, he hoped that
the corporation would augment property tax collection with the new
initiative.