Property Tax Collection - Inputs on Issues

BMC is full of corruption.Even their services are much below the expectation.It takes care of mainly the City area and Suburb is mostly neglected.Time has come it has to be bifurcated in to atleast 2 i.e. one for city and second for suburb.When Mumbai can have two districts then why not BMC.Most of the wrongful incidents are observed in suburbs. more  

Since the past two years, we have been paying the property tax on-line, without any complications. We life in South Delhi. more  

Municipal corporations are hub of crooks and corrupt. They are not here to collect taxes as per norms. They behave like touts and ask for money to reduce taxes. How come? if we owe money to govt as fixed value, they use all tricks in the book and reduce taxes selectively and dupe the govt and pocket money. Commercial establishments are classified differently to reduce taxes by showing property as self occupied, though it is let out. This is done in connivance with tax inspectors. Floor area is miss quoted to reduce tax payout. This is done with the help of tax inspectors. Since building plan has different area and constructed area is way above the sanctioned area. This deviation is not captured for tax calculation. resulting is loss to exchequer. If i come forward to pay taxes as per norms, i was asked to pay 50,000/- bribe to pay taxes for a commercial establishment. No straight person wish to have such a situation to pay taxes i need to line officer's pocket. I have paid bribe to pay taxes for the first time despite i building my home as per plan sanctioned. He took money and said i have reduced you payout. How come, i have no clue. We need to run tax collection department of civic body like a company. Compute all properties for the correctness of facts stated in the tax document. Later green tag complying properties.. pull up deviations and revise their taxes as per current property status and start collecting. we shall see huge jump in revenue and we need not work towards increasing the taxes. more  

Govt. should offer carrot and not penalties to individual for paying timely Property tax . Which could be : 1. Discount for early tax payment in slabs. Now only one slab discount for payment till Till June in Delhi. So same benefit for payment till June. If June is missed then pay till end year no Hurry as no benefit. It can be in slabs like 12% in 1st month, 11% in 2nd Month, 10% in 3rd month ... something like this. The % can be suitably fixed. 2. More discount should be offered if anyone want to pay 2 or 3 years together. Its busy schedule for most. So get rid of headache with benefit will help. 3. Ease of payment by allowing to deposit Tax in post office, bank or other location using mobile van for tax collection etc. to be allowed. 4. MCD should start property tax payment passbook. Now we have to maintain fat files with all receipts as we do not know when get some arrear as do not trust MCD maintaining all receipts properly. We have to maintain separate accounts and file keeping record of 10s of years which is unnecessary. 5. MCD can also allow quarterly tax payment instead of only once annual payment. This will help many to help with fund flow. 5. TV advertisement reminding tax payer of discount benefit or personalised SMS reminding tax payer for tax payment and taking benefit of discount can be initiated. 6. More happy interaction between MCD and property tax payer should be there. Like MCD can conduct monthly lottery, or give gift coupon to Sr citizen on Diwali etc. for visiting MCD maintained monuments or discount on Train journey or Calendar on new year etc. or small shopping coupon on festivals or free medical check up etc. I think this way the revenue collection can speed up. But the picture of MCD is very poor in mind of public. The property tax collected is supposed to be used in improve living condition of the public paying the taxes : 1. MCD must make a annual plan for maintenance of neighbourhood of tax payers and communicate to tax payers. 2. MCD must conduct an operational Audit of work done as planned and record deficiencies and plan corrective action and communicate to public by uploading information on public domain. 3. Virtual online grievance cell to sort out problems of tax payers, instead of coming to MCD property tax office in person . These are some of the initiative which MCD can take to improve revenue collection and its image and quality of life of people. This is my thought only. more  

Corporations and local bodies in general are perceived to be hubs of corruption. Can one believe that just last year the Madras High Court pulled up the authorities for NOT increasing property taxes for years on end. It is strange that no attempts were made by the Govt. to increase revenues. It can only be surmised that it was to line the pockets of individuals. To add insult to injury, when the taxes were increased in Chennai, they were hiked up exorbitantly without any cogent reasoning. When asked, the Corporation official gave me a bizzare reply that they had made a mistake in calculating the taxes two years back and so have jacked it up by more than 400%. He threatened that if he were to collect the arrears it would be a huge sum including penalties( for their fault, penalising us). With such shallow reasoning and pathetic services, the common citizen has all but given up. more