BBMP serves notices to owners underpaying property tax

Bengaluru: The BBMP — which has ramped up its revenue division — has started serving notices to owners underpaying property tax for seven years.

In many cases, the civic body has made an upward revision of the property tax after finding out that the owners have under-assessed their tax. 

The move has attracted resistance from some quarters, including from Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy. 

"I have received complaints that the BBMP has been serving notices by revising the property tax and demanding the excess unpaid amount of the last seven years. This is being done without following any guidelines. The property tax revision is unscientific and there is no provision in the Karnataka Municipal Corporation (KMC) Act, 1976, or the BBMP Act, 2020,” Reddy said in a letter to Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who is also the Bengaluru Development Minister. 

The notices are causing unnecessary burden to property owners, Reddy said, requesting Shivakumar to call a meeting of the officers concerned, discuss the subject and frame proper guidelines. 

Munish Moudgil, Special Commissioner (Revenue), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, told DH that both the KMC Act and the BBMP Act allows revenue officers to issue notices whenever they find properties being under-assessed to pay a lesser amount of tax.

“We estimate that there are lakhs of properties that are paying a lesser amount of tax. Issuing notices is a tough job as it requires revenue officers to physically survey the building. We may have issued notices to 20,000 property owners so far,” he said. 

After Moudgil took over as the head of the BBMP's revenue division, there has been a dramatic increase in revenue collection with the civic body recording an increase of over Rs 300 crore in property tax as compared to the corresponding period of last year.