Property tax: GHMC plans self-assessment mode

To do away with method of bill collectors visiting newly built structures to estimate tax

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is planning to incorporate a citizen-friendly approach to generate its revenue by doing away with the traditional method of bill collectors visiting newly constructed houses as well as structures with the additional built-up area.

For years, bill collectors measured the site manually and uploaded the details to the GHMC website to generate property tax amount. Now, the plan is to go for a complete self-assessment of property tax for new structures and revision of the existing tax in case of additional built-up area by property owners themselves. As of now, self-assessment is an option, along with physical verification by bill collectors.

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Once physical verification is done away with, that is, if the government approves the proposal, property owners will from then have to visit https://www.ghmc.gov.in/ and complete the online self-certification process by uploading the details and documents. Following this, an audit will be conducted.

With self-assessment posing the risk of wrong details being furnished, the GHMC is planning to deter that possibility by imposing hefty penalties. As of now, as per the Municipalities Act, 2019, if a person furnishes wrong details to lower property tax amount, the individual is liable for penalty as per section 94 of the Act. The municipality will collect the actual tax amount and impose a one-time penalty which will be at least 25 times the actual tax.

Meanwhile, another change made by the GHMC is providing privacy to property owners. Unlike earlier, property details and dues now are not available in the public domain. To pay the property tax or check dues, an OTP will be sent to the property owner using which the person can see the details. “We want to have an updated database to send alerts about payments and dues pertaining to property tax. We also wanted to provide privacy to property owners following which the OTP option was introduced,” a GHMC official said.

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