Plan to track under-assessment of property tax

The development has come a few months after the civic body had increased the property tax rates across the city by 50 per cent for residential buildings and 100 per cent for commercial buildings.

“During the recent tax revision, we have reassessed the tax amount for the buildings based on the new street rates. However, we have to confirm the usage of the buildings, whether residential or commercial,” a Chennai Corporation official said.

The official added that the GIS-based mapping and properties survey are almost complete and after the survey, civic body’s revenue staff would visit over 12 lakh buildings in the city. Chennai Corporation had commenced the GIS survey using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in November 2017 to document the properties in the city.

“Using UAVs, we can ascertain the size and height of the buildings. But we cannot ascertain the exact usage. There are chances for some residents to falsely declare the commercial use buildings as residential use ones. We must conduct door-to-door survey, after the election, to correct underassessments. This will increase the tax revenue to the Chennai Corporation,” the official added.

The present actual property tax demand in the city is nearly Rs 1,500 crore and the officials expect that the door-to-door survey would increase the actual demand. Meanwhile, the civic body had managed to collect Rs 1,002 crore as property tax in 2018-2019 financial year, which is Rs 2 crore higher than the revised target and Rs 198 crore short of the actual target.

The civic body, due to the ongoing election works, is yet to fix a property tax collection target for the year 2019-2020. However, the civic budget has estimated tax revenue of Rs 1,911 crore includingother taxes.