Bangalore, February 22 : While Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara palike (B.B.M.P) is planning to significantly increase the property tax to generate more funds for its development projects , B.B.M.P. opposition party leader M.K.Gunashekar has strongly opposed the move saying it is anti-public.
In a press release he says that though monetary flow is required for carrying out the development projects , it is unacceptable to burden the citizen to shell out more money for the property tax which B.B.M.P. is planning to collect from April 1, 2013.
He has suggested that B.B.M.P. should intensify collection of revenue from Advertisement tax , license fee for starting a new business, O.F.C. fees and other areas where the actual tax is not been collected due to lethargic attitude of the B.B.M.P.
“Already people are frustrated due to steep increase in price of all commodities and it is unfair on the part of B.B.M.P. to consider burdening them with the increase of property tax” Gunashekar said.
He has also suggested to minimise the office expenditure of B.B.M.P. and cut down the cost of unnecessary expenditure of palike after giving a conscious thought.
It is suggested that the BBMP should arrange to collect property tax from nearly 7 lakh property holders out of 20lakhs of which only 13 lakhs holders are paying the taxes.It is also suggested to levy property tax on vacant site holders who kept them from so many years/decades for speculation purposes rather than for self dwelling purposes. The rate should be not less than 10 times of the vacant site taxes with retrospective effect after 3 years after allotment/purchase of such sites. This will enable the BBMB to net enormous funds without hiking/squeezing the present prompt tax payers. This will stabilise the real estate markets, systamatic real growth of city and curtailing of black transactions. To one extent the vacant sites in the BBMP is itself more than 10 times of the proposed available number of sites in Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout by BDA. If such is the case no need to hike the property taxes in nearby future and there will be no dearth of funds to BBMP for its legitimate developmental activities.