BENGALURU: Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) flat and site owners can now pay their annual property tax at the click of a button as the payment process will go online shortly. Speaking to The New Indian Express, a top official said that all testing work on its webpage related to tax payment have been tested and completed.
“For encryption purposes, we have applied for Security Socket Layer Certificate. It is expected to be given to us in a couple of days,” the official said, adding that the authority will be in a position to initiate the online payment process within a week. “There are 79,332 BDA properties across the city,” the official said. Explaining the payment process, the official said that one needed to key in the property ID number under the “Fees, Tax and Fines” section on the website (bdabangalore.org) and a one time password (OTP) will be sent to the owner’s mobile number.
“Details on payment to be made will be displayed online and payment can be done using debit or credit card. The receipt will be immediately available online,” the official added. “The online system is faster, transparent due to lack of human intervention and saves the owner time.” “In the physical process, a tax challan was generated by the BDA and sent to the owner’s postal address. That was time consuming for the BDA and involved postal charges too.
The owner later had to remit the payment in a bank. Sometimes, there were complaints of owners not receiving challans leading to problems for the owners,” the official said. For the ongoing financial year, the BDA will accept tax payment both online and offline, but it plans to make it fully online in future. BDA had first launched online payment system in 2014. But, it developed software problems and received many complaints. The webpage became inaccessible and physical remittance at banks has continued since then.