Kanpur: The Kanpur civic body has decided to conduct Geographical Information System (GIS) survey of the entire city to bring more houses under tax net.
The GIS survey would be conducted in the city after 13 years. When it was held for the first time in 2006, the senior KMC officials had found that taxes of many houses fixed by the property owners were quite less than the stipulated taxes.
The new GIS survey will break the nexus of corrupt Kanpur Municipal Corporation (KMC) employees who are minting money in the name of house tax, said a senior KMC official. Additional municipal commissioner Amrit Lal Bind stated that objections of that survey were still pending, and he has ordered to issue notice to house owners to settle their cases by August 31.
The government has assigned the job of conducting the new survey to a Lucknow-based company, and it is expected to begin from September 1, Bind said. He also added that as Kanpur Nagar had been declared a smart city, the local body would need money for its maintenance, and the main source of revenue is house and water taxi.
According to a zonal officer, several residential areas of the city such as Arya Nagar, Swaroop Nagar, Kakadeo, Pandu Nagar, Tilak Nagar, P Road, Lal Bangla, Kaushalpuri etc have become commercial but most house owners of these areas were paying residential house tax instead of commercial tax. The landlords of these areas should pay taxes on commercial rate basis but due to the nexus with corrupt KMC employees they were paying tax at the residential rates, the zonal officer added.
As property owners have also started selling floors of their houses, houses have been turned into three to four properties but on tax point they were paying tax of just one house.
At present, as per KMC record, around 4.65 lakh house owners are paying the house tax which comes to around Rs 156 crore while around one lakh houses are out of tax net, said the additional municipal commissioner. Efforts were being made to bring all properties of the city under a fair tax net, he added.
Source: ET Realty