Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

Making money out of confusion

MADURAI: Amidst continuing confusion on the ongoing process of property tax revision, a group of retired employees of Corporation are allegedly making money on the promise of helping the assessees in “reclassifying” areas in order to fix lesser tax.

Corporation officials, who concur with the allegation purportedly made by one M. Masanamuthu of a consumer protection movement, said that the men were able to “cheat” people only because of the details of new procedures and calculations of property tax had not been made public.

“Adequate information on the issue has not reached the people. It is worse, when the tax assessees have been asked to make self-assessment of the tax,” an official said.

The third column of the self-assessment form would make most of the people stumble to fill up as they do not know the “ward percentage” — 27 or 20 per cent — to which their area belongs. “If your area has all basic amenities you belong to 27 per cent or else it is 20 per cent,” said the official.

However, in simple terms, he explained that those areas having underground drainage belonged to the first category and others to the second.

Besides, the details of reclassification of areas from seven categories to four – A, B, C and D – have not been made very clear.

All these days, the officials have been giving only examples, but not the definition of the classification.

“This lack of information is what helps the vested interests to cheat people,” he said.

In broad terms, bus/heavy vehicle roads belong to A, sub-roads – B; streets – C; and land and areas along slums belong to D.

“Classification of all streets has been finalised and no one can change it without the consent of the council,” the official said.

Another important change in tax calculation is that the taxation based on each level of multi-storey buildings has gone and all the floors will be calculated as per the rate of ground floor.

Though the calculation of property tax will be a tricky task for the common man, officials claim that despite new rules, the property tax for all buildings will not go beyond the stipulated rates.

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