The Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC) is surveying to recognise how many homes in the city have been evading tax. Officials told the media that the civic body, which had collected Rs 146 crore in property tax last year, was hoping to increase its yearly revenue by at least Rs 80 crore via tax collected from the remaining homes.

A geographic information system (GIS) survey is in the last stage. They have reviewed 97 of the 100 wards here. Simultaneously, the corporation is conducting a door-to-door survey and the data is being collated, as per Sanjeev Sinha, the chief tax assessment officer.

It has come to their notice that tax has not been collected from many homes that have come up lately. There are buildings where extra growth has taken place too. As the total tax is based on carpet and covered regions, the GMC can collect more revenue from such properties.

Presently, the GMC levies tax under two heads, carpet area (Rs 2.14 per sq ft) and covered area (87 paise per sq ft). As of now, they are collecting tax from 3.8 lakh homes. But if the number of buildings that have been either remodelled or built new is taken into account, it would be anywhere roughly 5 lakh. As per a rough estimate, the additional revenue from house tax would be about Rs 80 crore yearly.

The civic body had faced stiff resistance from residents when it had hiked house tax by 15% last year. Officials in GMC, yet, claimed that tax rates in the city were among the lowest in the state. The GMC is additionally planning to allot a unique 17-digit identification number to each property under residential and commercial types. Officials consider that a digital system will assist the corporation to garner maximum payment. The current tax computation model employed by GMC is outdated. It needs a revamp. Under the revived programme, they will soon be introducing software, property tax management, with an ambition to maximise the revenue.

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