- MCC to introduce online payment from April
- Hopes to increase revenue collection
Mysuru/Mysore: Come April, citizens need not stand in long queues braving the scorching sun to pay their property tax. Thanks to its citizen-friendly initiative, the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC), though after much delay, is all set to launch an online portal for enabling the citizens to pay their property tax online by a click of the mouse sitting from home, at their own time and convenience.
The new system will be a reality from April 1, 2020 with the MCC having already started preparations in this regard.
The online system, apart from becoming a boon for tax- payers, will be of much help to the MCC, which is struggling to augment its revenues. With the launching of online portal, the civic body hopes to reach its target of Rs.150 crore property tax collection (2019-20). Till now, the MCC has been successful in collecting only Rs.114 crore, a shortfall of Rs.36 crore.
The civic body is lagging behind in water tax collection too, as only Rs.42 crore out of the Rs.60 crore target has been collected so far.
The online property tax payment system is a long-overdue project as the MCC had proposed this system in 2010 itself. The authorities had developed a software for the purpose but the project was not implemented due to some reason or the other.
According to MCC officials, the online payment will largely reduce paper work and also save time and money. The portal will send timely SMS alerts to citizens’ mobile phones on payment of property taxes.
The MCC had entrusted the State-run KEONICS (Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd) for developing the Software for the online portal at a cost of Rs.98 lakh.
With the MCC all set to launch online portal from April 1, the citizens hope that the portal is maintained in a proper manner and there are no technical glitches.
But there is bad news also for property owners as the MCC has proposed to significantly hike property tax rates from the forthcoming financial year (2020-21).The proposed hike is said to considerably augment the revenues of the cash-strapped civic body, which is forced to look at newer avenues for revenue augmentation.
The MCC, which is a 65-member body, has nine Zonal Offices. At present, the civic body is offering a five percent rebate to property owners who pay tax of the financial year in advance. The five percent rebate will be in force from April1 to 30 every year and usually, the tax-payers stand in long queues in their respective Zonal Offices at this time of the year to pay property tax and avail the rebate.
Now with the introduction of online system, the property owners will get a big relief from standing and waiting in queues for their turn. With the online system, the tax collection will go paperless and also helps in maintaining transparency.
If on-line property tax payment really comes on stream this year on April 1st, it will be a great event in Mysuru’s history. This will show that MCC has finally entered the digital era. Since we have been waiting for this event to take place for many years (and not as implied since 2010), let us all hope that the Commissioner Hegde will succeed where his several predecessors have failed. On-line payment is not only a boon to honest tax payers, it will give an excellent tool to MCC to monitor the late payment, non payment and underpayment. In my opinion if the on-line tax system is designed incorporating the modern management information system, MCC should be able to reach not just its target, but be able to collect double the amount. A city of our size and wealth should be able to collect at least Rs. 300 crores per year based on my calculation.
Does this online property tax payment also include payments to areas coming under panchayat offices or is it limited only to areas coming under MCC ??
This is a great move by MCC and absolutely beneficial for property owners who don’t reside in the city (or even NRIs). Hope the implementation goes smooth and the service is actively maintained. It may be worthwhile to promote this payment medium by offering rebates for people paying the property tax online, which will help manage to keep the queues to minimal and reduce man power requirements for physical payments.
I am commenting based on my experience of property tax payer some 50 years ago, where all transactions are paper based. Whilst a few of us paid the tax on time, there are many who did not and got away not paying a single Rupee for several years. They did so through the typical Indian approach-getting to know the officials, using all means: political patronage, corruption ,quid-pro- quo approach managed and to evade paying the tax. In many cases , just to ensure that the focus was not turned on them, the officials concerned instructed their teams to undervalue the big properties these influential people owned, and reduced their tax band so significantly that the person who owned a tiny house for his living paid more tax than these people.
The problem is multi-faceted and merely introducing an on-line payment will not solve them. The ones who have no political and any other influence and earn a living through hardwork, will save their waiting time and pay the taxes on-line. Theirs will be the modest properties whose valuations are correctly carried out. But what of those which are under-valued? This category has always been the bigger houses and larger properties and their owners, who have had always considerable political power. They have been untouchable , and have seen MCC officialdom come and go!
The modern management system can only manage processes based on the data captured. If the data captured is wrong as in the case of undervalued properties, the approach to set it right is always based on human willingness and effort: of officials and the politicians. Here lies the failure which every honest person despairs. It does not matter where the system is human-driven or by technology, the category of people alluded to above are always winning.
The question of transparency should not be confined to those who pay the tax, but also in relation to how the money is spent. There has to be details of how the money collected is spent and the yearly audit report , made available for the tax payers through links in the web pages. It is often the cynicism in India that only the fools pay what is required of them, and the clever ones often the dishonest get away paying nothing and yet recognised and rewarded.