The Hindu : MCD may extend deadline for property tax payments

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 28, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

MCD may extend deadline for property tax payments

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MARCH 27. With the deadline for implementation of the proposed new Unit Area System of property tax assessment in the Capital approaching fast, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is also gearing up to ensure that the system is introduced smoothly. Working in this direction, a pre-implementation review meeting today decided to consider extension of the deadline for lump sum payments to September 2004 while relaxing the procedure for certification of covered area.

The meeting, attended by senior MCD functionaries including the Mayor, Ashok Jain, the Standing Committee Chairman, Mukesh Goel, and the Municipal Commissioner, Rakesh Mehta, decided to consider extending the deadline for rebate on lump sum payments up to September 2004 instead of the current prescribed cut-off date of June 2004. This has been done mainly to enable the Anomaly and Hardship Committee to resolve the cases which may come up for consideration during the first year of implementation of the new system, effective from this coming April 1.

It has also been proposed that any increase in incidence of tax, in the case of residential premises, would be capped at two-and-a-half times of the tax being assessed and paid in the previous year, primarily to avoid any hardship to senior citizens and other economically weaker sections. The Government would be issuing necessary guidelines to the Anomaly and Hardship Committee to consider the above measure for such groups of people.

The meeting also decided that in order to facilitate easy access to architects for certification of covered area for properties on plot sizes of 100 sq. meter and above, or for those properties where no other documentary proof of covered area is available, the covered area can be certified by any architect registered with the Council of Architecture apart from architects empanelled with the Corporation. "The fees for such certification could be mutually settled between the property owner and the architect. However, the same would not exceed 10 per cent of the tax assessed under any circumstances," the meeting observed.

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