MA&UD eyes higher collections

Hyderabad: The Municipal Administration Department is eyeing for higher tax collections after reverification of properties. As many property owners filed wrong details in hopes to reduce the tax assessments, which resulted in 13,000 wrong assessments in all the Urban Local Bodies (ULB), the department took the decision. 

The officials observed that over 13,000 assessments were wrongly done in the Urban Local Bodies. According to officials, the property owners would file for ground floor only buildings but, they would be ground plus one or two. The official said there may be chances that the property owners would go for construction after the assessment of the tax by the officials and the same tax continues. The Municipal Department officials recently found over 16,500 properties, which were out of the tax net with the help of geo tagging of the properties in 72 ULBs. 

After re-verification, the officials found that over 13,000 properties were wrongly assessed, and the Karimnagar Corporation tops the list where over 1,400 properties were wrongly assessed. Similarly, in 43 municipalities there are over 1,300 properties, which never paid any property tax. 

There are 320 properties in Wanaparthy municipality, which have not paid tax of single rupee. There are over 100 to 200 assessments in each ULB which have not paid property tax until now. The officials are now concentrating on increasing the tax collection by getting all the un-assessed properties into the tax net. The officials are also focusing on the properties which have Central and State government offices. In case of some properties, the name of the owner is different hence, it was decided to re-verify the government offices and the name of the property owner. 

On the other hand, there are some ULBs which have achieved 100 per cent tax collection. According to officials, the ULBs with 100 per cent tax collections include Siddipet, Peerzadiguda, Peddapally, Metpally, Boduppal and Shamshabad. 

Commissioner and Director of Municipal Administration (CDMA) T K Sreedevi said the remote sensing satellite Bhuvan gave much more information than Google. The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) had done the job for us, the CDMA said.