NEW DELHI: One of the richest civic bodies, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) presented its budget for the coming 2019-20 year. One of the highlights of the budget was property tax as the agency proposed to reduce the rebate for people who deposit the taxes on timely basis, and also increase the rate of taxation on residential properties.
For residential property owners in the sprawling South Delhi, falling under the civic body’s jurisdiction, a revised rate of tax is on the anvil from the next financial year.
According to the proposal, properties falling under A and B category will be taxed at the rate of 14%, from the current 12%. Similarly, in the C, D and E categories, tax bracket will be 12%, up a 1 point. For the F, G and H categories, tax will be 8%, instead of the 7%. The rates are based on the annual value of the property.
The SDMC commissioner Puneet Kumar Goel also proposed to bring down the rebate for those who pay before the deadline. It will be 10%, instead of 15%. Similarly, there is a proposal to do away with additional rebate of 20% for payment of one time property tax with respect to co-operative group societies. According to the civic body, in a door-to-door survey conducted this year 1.83 lakh properties which were out of the property tax net were identified.
To rationalise the property tax rates, proposal is to levy the property tax on non-residential properties, as per the category of colonies. For commercial properties, tax would be charged at the rate of 15% of annual property value. Property tax is one of the biggest revenue generators for the civic body, as it expects to earn `800 crore in the current financial year. In the next financial year, the SDMC proposed the largest expenditure of its total revenue in sanitation sector (25.47%), followed by education (18.15%), then engineering (16.03%).