In a move to streamline irregularities in registration of properties, the state government has made the rules stringent.
Submission of payment receipts of vacant land tax or property tax has been made mandatory for registration of assets while incorporation of the title owner in the adangal copy is important for agriculture land.
The move is also expected to help the state government garner additional revenues in the current fiscal as the vacant land owners were found not paying the taxes on time.
The local bodies in urban and rural areas were unable to collect vacant land tax due to absence of property owner data base with local bodies.
Urban civic bodies and rural local bodies have been demanding the state government to transfer details of land sellers and purchasers soon after the registration in order to track down them to collect vacant land tax. However, the government is unable to share the data of the vacant land owners due to technical reasons.
The state government introduced the new property tax system in urban areas linking them with the value of the asset. The old annual rental value (ARV) tax calculation method has been replaced with the capital value (CV) tax system bringing uniformity in tax imposition on properties depending on market value fixed by the registration department.
This reform has largely helped the state government prevent irregularities during levying of the tax by the revenue wing officials in urban civic bodies. Property tax will be calculated and generated by the system based on the property data shared by the registration department.
However, urban civic bodies have been struggling to collect Vacant Land Tax (VLT) from owners due to absence of the data base. As per the VLT Act, the site owner should pay six half-year VLT while filing an application for the building plan. However, the government noticed that the vacant lands are changing several hands before a construction comes up in the said area.
It means that it is losing huge amount as payment of VLT was not mandatory for selling or purchasing the site in the past. To fix the anomaly, the government has made the submission of VLT mandatory for all the registration of open plots.
