Till I read it in the "letters to the editor" column, I did not quite realize that the annual property tax that we pay is (much)less than the building maintenance charge that we pay annually.
That is, what we pay to the government for providing us street-lights, roads,road sweepers,drainage system etc is less than what we pay the building administrator for fewer facilities.
This goaded me to pay my property tax well in time and much before the due date. There is even a 5% rebate for paying the property tax before the 31st March,2009. There is no such rebate for paying our building maintenance charge in time.
In the process of calculating and paying the property tax I discovered the following:
1.That all details required to pay the tax is completely detailed in the BBMP website - Bruhath Bangaluru Mahanagara Palike
2.That the form for paying the tax can be downloaded from this website.
3.There is a property tax calculator on the website which is very useful.
4.The actual process of submitting the form and cheque and getting a receipt took less than 10 minutes.
5. That there is a facility, without charge, at the tax collection center to verify the accuracy of the amount filled by the tax payer.
6.That the person manning this facility is friendly and helpful (atleast this was the case where I payed the tax).
The only note of caution is this : please do not write your cheque with the paise. This is because the tax collecting software does not accept paisa payment - though your tax calculation will be in paisa decimals and you dare not round it up fearing that the bureaucracy may treat the rounding off as as attempt to pay the incorrect amount.
Even the otherwise helpful website does not warn you of this.
1 comment:
The online calculator rounds it up for you.
By the way, the form in the website is a filled one only as an example. You HAVE to buy the blank form (at Rs. 5) with its unique serial no.
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