CHENNAI: The city corporation has taken a series of measures through inter-department and internal integration to address delay in assessing properties for collecting tax. The measures will help owners to get their properties assessed easily, officials said.
As a first step, corporation officials are in talks with the State registration department to automatically get access to property details for assessment at the time of registration of the property. Tax assessment will be generated automatically and sent to the assessee without him/her having to approach the corporation for that.
“Currently, assessment is done after the registration of property. Integrating the system eliminates the need for owners to visit various offices for assessment,” said a corporation official. The civic body is also planning to integrate tax databases with building permits.
“It may take two to three years for completion of construction of properties from the date of approval of plan. In the interim period, some properties may go off corporation’s radar. To avoid this, henceforth, residents will be issued provisional assessment at the time of issuance of building permits,” said a senior corporation official.
While property tax is generated from the date of issue of completion certificate, property owners may get to use the provisional assessment record to get electricity or water connections. After focusing on revising property tax for the last few months, the civic body has now turned its attention to improving collection by setting up easy payment options, identifying under-assessed and unassessed properties through geographic information system (GIS) and third party re-assessment.
Revenue officials are given fortnightly targets for collection of property tax for each zone and review meetings are being conducted by the corporation commissioner with tax collectors and revenue officials to discuss pending cases. The civic body also wants to increase collection of professional tax.