JOIN USA tough property tax target: Rs 800 crore in three months
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has collected Rs 1,633 crore of property tax in nine months of the current fiscal year — Rs 206.22 crore more than what it had collected in the whole of the financial year 2014-15.
Nevertheless, the civic body faces the huge task of collecting almost Rs 800 crore in the remaining three months of the current financial year. It had set a target of collecting
Rs 2,400 crore of property tax in the financial year 2015-16.
A tax collection drive in the last 100 days — starting in the last week of September 2015 — fetched it Rs 264 crore, the highest in the same period in the past five years, said M Shivaraju, Chairperson of the Palike’s Standing Committee on Taxation and Finance.
He was addressing a press conference on Monday on the measures taken by the Palike to increase the property tax collection in the current fiscal year.
The drive targeted major property tax defaulters. The Palike recovered Rs 4.98 crore from four major complexes — Total mall, Bangalore Central mall, South Space and Home Town.
Manyata Promoters Pvt Ltd, which received a notice from the BBMP for not paying Rs 83.93 crore of property tax, moved the High Court and secured a stay on the recovery of the amount.
Shivaraju hoped that the Palike would meet the tax target for the current financial year.
He also said the BBMP recently closed all of its 900 current accounts and moved the cash to 26 savings accounts with Canara Bank, which are operated from the Palike’s head office for 26 different account heads. The exercise helped Palike recover unaccounted cash of Rs 164 crore.
The BBMP is set to earn about Rs 20 crore a year as interest from these savings accounts, he added.