Property tax to be reassessed, 1.5L city buildings

Chennai

According to a Chennai Corporation official, the under-assessed buildings have been identified during the civic body’s GIS-based drone survey and subsequent door-to-door survey.

“More than 1.55 lakh buildings are found to be paying lesser property tax rate. All the identified buildings are located in as many as 94 divisions in the core city zones such as Tondiarpet, Royapuram, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, Anna Nagar, Teynampet, Kodambakkam and Adyar,” the official said.

Overall, the city has over 12 lakh buildings that pay property tax to the civic body. When asked about the reason for not identifying under-assessed buildings in extended zones, the official said that most of the localities in the extended zones do not have proper street names as well as door numbers. “Due to this, we could not maintain records. Once the issue is solved, such buildings would be assessed for property tax,” he added.

It may be noted that the civic body commenced the GIS-based drone survey in November 2017 to identify under-assessed buildings. Soon after the drone survey in the core city zones was completed, the civic body conducted a door-to-door survey to cross-verify the findings of the GIS survey. “Now, we have to visit those buildings and re-assess the tax rate. This will increase the property tax revenue,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the civic body chaired a meeting a few days ago and instructed the Revenue Department staff to start re-assessing the under-assessed buildings by visiting the properties. The property tax assessors in the division-level have been ordered to visit 10 such properties every day. However, officials expressed fear that visiting several houses during the pandemic is dangerous