Skyrocketing property tax rates shock residents
Residents have flayed the city corporation for increasing the property tax manifold without properly assessing their properties. In several cases, the revised tax was higher than even the guideline value on the properties, residents said. Political parties, including the ruling party are demanding a rollback. As many as 22,9718 buildings, including houses and commercial establishments, are under property tax assessment in the city. “The corporation has reassessed and revised property tax on about 19,000 buildings. Without assessing the properties properly, they have revised the taxes even up by 20,000%,” CPI district secretary M Ravi said. “For instance, K Nataraj of BSS Road, who owns a house on a 522sqft land, was asked to pay Rs 542 as property tax in 2016-17. But a notice from the corporation dated October 3 asked him to pay Rs 35,663 andRs 70,874 for 2017-18 and 2018-19 respectively. The man, a retired spinning mill labourer, is now forced pay Rs 1.06 lakh, which is even higher than the guideline value of the property,” he said. “We have so far come across at least 50 such cases. The corporation has started to send such notices with revised tax rates. It earlier pretended that it dropped the move to collect the revised taxes after opposition parties staged protests,” Ravi said. Three orders were issued in connection with the taxes, Ravi said. “Apart from the government order, the commissioner of municipal administration had directed the civic bodies to fix the tax from Rs 1.8 to Rs 3 per sqft. Additionally, Tirupur corporation arbitrarily came up with the plan of increasing tax for 19,000 buildings.”
Tags : News/Views