Mysore City Corporation provides a calculator on its website which is supposed to calculate your property tax. For multi-storeyed properties, it overestimates the tax and causes loss to the property owner. The calculator is not just incorrect, it also violates laws.
According to Sec. 109 of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, property tax is assessed on the value of the building plus the value of the land occupied by it. Vacant land around the building is exempt from tax. The MCC calculator calculates the value of the land for each floor of the building and therefrom the tax on the land. For a multistoreyed building, the value of the land and the tax on it must be calculated only once since all floors of the building stand on the same land, but the calculator does it for each floor and thus overestimates the tax. Owners of multistoreyed buildings who use the MCC calculator are paying more property tax than they should.
Now about the violation of laws. The calculator (and in fact all MCC records of properties) measures property dimensions in feet. It is amazing that even after 50 years of banning the British units of measurement and adopting metric units, MCC is still not using metres as units! The Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1956 made the metre the official unit of length in India. The government and the public were given a grace period of 6 years to convert to the metric system. After 1-4-1962, it is illegal to use non-metric units such as feet. In fact, Sec. 80 of the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976 (which replaced the 1956 Act) mandates that non-metric measures should not even be stated in any enactment, notification, rule or order of the government.
The MCC tax calculator also violates the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976.The calculator gives 50% discount for self-occupancy and allows for depreciation, but there are no provisions of the KMC Act which permit them.
In fact, using the calculator to calculate the property tax afresh every year is itself illegal. Sec. 109A of the KMC Act clearly says that the property tax shall not be assessed each year but shall stand enhanced by 15 percent once in every three years commencing from the financial year 2005-2006. So all one has to do is to pay (for 2011-12) 15% more than what was paid in 2010-11.
Another problem with the online tax calculator is that it can only calculates tax for the current year. People who have not paid last year's tax can not use the calculator since it does not give a printout of last year's tax.
According to Sec. 109 of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, property tax is assessed on the value of the building plus the value of the land occupied by it. Vacant land around the building is exempt from tax. The MCC calculator calculates the value of the land for each floor of the building and therefrom the tax on the land. For a multistoreyed building, the value of the land and the tax on it must be calculated only once since all floors of the building stand on the same land, but the calculator does it for each floor and thus overestimates the tax. Owners of multistoreyed buildings who use the MCC calculator are paying more property tax than they should.
Now about the violation of laws. The calculator (and in fact all MCC records of properties) measures property dimensions in feet. It is amazing that even after 50 years of banning the British units of measurement and adopting metric units, MCC is still not using metres as units! The Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1956 made the metre the official unit of length in India. The government and the public were given a grace period of 6 years to convert to the metric system. After 1-4-1962, it is illegal to use non-metric units such as feet. In fact, Sec. 80 of the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976 (which replaced the 1956 Act) mandates that non-metric measures should not even be stated in any enactment, notification, rule or order of the government.
The MCC tax calculator also violates the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976.The calculator gives 50% discount for self-occupancy and allows for depreciation, but there are no provisions of the KMC Act which permit them.
In fact, using the calculator to calculate the property tax afresh every year is itself illegal. Sec. 109A of the KMC Act clearly says that the property tax shall not be assessed each year but shall stand enhanced by 15 percent once in every three years commencing from the financial year 2005-2006. So all one has to do is to pay (for 2011-12) 15% more than what was paid in 2010-11.
Another problem with the online tax calculator is that it can only calculates tax for the current year. People who have not paid last year's tax can not use the calculator since it does not give a printout of last year's tax.
P.M.Bhat, Mysore Grahakara Parishat