South Corpn asks cops to share data

This will help recover property tax from owners

With the civic body failing to get the exact data of number of property owners who have rented out their properties but conceal the fact while paying property tax, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation  has sought assistance of Delhi police in acquiring data of the rented properties in its jurisdiction. 

All the police stations have a database of tenants in their area as the property owners have to mandatorily provide information about their tenants to the local police.
The South corporation wants Delhi police to share this databse, which will be used to recover property tax from property owners. 

The property tax department of the corporation has written to the city police seeking the database of rented properties, registered across all the four zones under its jurisdiction.

“While the property is rented out, police verification of the tenant is done by the local police station. Record of all such properties is maintained by the police.

The department will like to have the database of all such properties so that appropriate tax is recovered from such properties as lack of information is causing huge revenue loss to the Corporation,” the letter written by the joint assessor and collector reads.

According to the civic body officials, a large number of property owners have rented out their properties but are not paying the tax accordingly, causing monetary loss to the corporation.

As per the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act, the property tax for rented properties is higher than the self-occupied ones.

“It is mostly seen that the property owners do not disclose the occupancy and use of the property.

There are thousands of such properties in the SDMC areas that are not paying taxes accordingly.

We are making all efforts to recover dues from the tax evaders. Police record will give us the exact number of rented properties,” said BN Singh, assessor and collector of SDMC.

The amount of property tax varies according to the coverage area, age, structure, occupancy and use of the property.

In case the property is rented out, the tax slab changes as compared to the tax applicable in self-occupied properties.