3.9 lakh owners undervalued property, underpaid tax: BBMP

A whopping 3.9 lakh owners in various BBMP zones have quoted wrong guidance value for their properties under the scheme to self-assess their property tax, the civic body has found.

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad said notices would be issued to the 3.9 lakh property owners to pay the pending tax with penal interest. “Under the self-assessment scheme, either the citizens or BBMP officials can indicate the zone (residential or commercial) and accordingly compute the property tax. We had allowed the property owners to fill up the guidance value option by themselves,” Prasad said.

“But many of the property owners have misused the option by giving wrong information about the zones and reduce the property tax. “We were unable to collect the tax as it was planned initially. When we probed it further, we got to know about this fraud and identified 3,90,000 property owners,” Prasad added.

The commissioner suspects that some revenue officials may be in cahoots with the owners while finalising the taxes. “They may have changed the zonal nature to help some property owners compute less tax,” he said, adding that the civic body has begun the process of serving legal notices to owners, who were also informed about the lapses.

“The system was launched in 2016 and our officials are estimating the extent of the loss incurred by BBMP in the last four years due to this fraud. We’ll soon serve notices on the owners with differential tax amount,” Prasad said.

Owners will be given 15 days to raise objections if any and the BBMP will then take action to recover the pending amount, the commissioner said.

Mapping guidance value

Intending to end the fraud, the BBMP wants to map all the properties within its jurisdiction with guidance value obtained from the stamps and registration department. “We are mapping the guidance value information on the BBMP’s GIS-enabled property tax information system (GEPTIS). The moment the property owner mentions the PID number, it will display the property tax amount as per the mapped guidance value. Hence, there is no provision for either the owners or the officials to wrongly enter the details,” Prasad said.

For properties without the PID numbers, owners can click the BBMP map where the guidance value is determined using various colour codes depending on the nature of the property. They can then choose the appropriate value and pay the tax. It is estimated that the BBMP will spend Rs 39 lakh — Rs 4.9 lakh per zone — to map the guidance value.