Thiruvananthapuram: A backbreaking chore awaits the City Corporation if it intends to complete the procedures for collecting the revised property tax from October. While the State Government has set the deadline for the preparation of the new assessment register as September, which is just two months away, the proceedings are yet to gain momentum in the Corporation.
The local body has divided the Corporation limits into several zones - primary, secondary and tertiary - including the newly added wards, for tax collection. The Council has already accepted the new and revised rates. The next hurdle is to classify the roads. As per the new method, a property by the main road and by the sub-road would mean differential tax for the payer. The Finance Committee will convene a meeting of the Corporation engineers in the coming days to discuss the modality of the classification, Deputy Mayor G Happykumar said.
The Corporation’s zone classification itself was a delayed process as it is the biggest Corporation in the State with 100 wards. The rest of the procedures would not be easy. ‘’We cannot go about in a fast mode since we are the largest Corporation. Besides, procedures have to be complaint-free,’’ Happykumar said. He, however, expressed the hope that the local body would be able to meet the deadline.
Meanwhile, the Corporation has floated tenders for fixing number plates in households. This would be finalised in a few days, after which house-numbering will begin. Once the road survey also gets completed, the Finance Committee has good job at hand.
Earlier, the property tax was assessed by calculating the rent value of the property. Now, the plinth area is taken into consideration. The roads, infrastructure facilities and the zone would decide the tax. The Committee will then publish the list by taking into consideration all these factors for public response. The public will then have to assess their property against the norms arrived by the local body.
However, if this does not meet with the assessment of the local body, it could naturally give rise to problems. The complaints have to be rectified before proceeding further. As of now, the Corporation hopes to do all this and come out with the assessment register by the end of September.
The Government has asked all local bodies to send out demand notices to taxpayers by October 16. Whenever it comes into effect, the taxpayer will have to file it with retrospective effect from April 2012. It remains to be seen if the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation will make or skip the deadline.
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