Insights

Traditional system of Revenue Collection and Management has started posing challenges for the Government and several civic bodies due to the gap between revenue collection system and the growth of the economy. GIS is one such technology that could enhance the revenue collection mechanism for Government authorities, no matter whether it is property tax or municipality tax or utility bills (water/electricity/telecom). GIS can provide an efficient and improved and system to not only increase the revenue collection but to monitor the process and identify defaulters.

There are approximately 7840 urban bodies (including Municipal corporations, Municipalities and Notified Area Councils) in India. Most, if not all, of those urban bodies are following traditional manual processes to collect taxes. Listed below are general sources of revenue for Municipal corporations, though in certain cases there might be some variations for municipalities and NACs:

• 1. Exclusive taxes such as property tax, professional tax, entertainment tax, advertisement tax and revenue-shared taxes
• 2. All taxes on goods and services levied by the state government
• 3. Other revenue sources such as value added tax (VAT), sales tax, stamp duty, electricity, purchase tax, luxury tax, taxes on lottery, betting and gambling, entry taxes in lieu of octroi, etc.
• 4. Non-tax revenues such as user charges, trade licensing fees, FSI charges, betterment charges, impact fees and development charges

There is no regular update or monitoring in the addition or removal of different units in those source of revenues. For example, in case of property tax there is no close monitoring of whether appropriate property taxes are made by owners on the addition of houses, additions of floors in houses, change of ownership etc. As a result, municipalities are seemingly in loss of large amounts of revenue.

Let’s take a look at how GIS could help in efficiently monitoring this process and thereby stop the loss of revenue through effective enforcement of property tax practices.

Property tax is not being realized to its full potential due to poor assessment rates of properties and weaker efficiency in revenue collections. The biggest challenge faced by municipalities and local civic bodies today is to define better methods for property valuation, keeping a regular track on revenue collections and record losses on account of exemptions.

GIS could help monitor the property tax revenue by preparing a common platform that visually links all property-related data such as the number of floors in each building, the total constructed area of each building, individual plot areas, details of locality, and road facing details with the applied tax calculation principles. An efficient GIS can store accurate information on tax payables and revenue collection which can be monitored visually. It can send automated notices to tax payers periodically to update them about pending dues. Visual representation of the whole property tax system shall not only build an efficient and accurate tax collection mechanism, but also reduces the frequency of field visits for complaint redressal and other assessment purposes. This would also provide accessibility to all the related civic departments and shall enable a transparent and consistent system for tax assessment.

As a leading provider of GIS services AABSyS is capable of delivering GIS based Property Tax Management System through the following:

• Creation of a full view city map with the up-to-date Municipality boundary
• Preparation of ward maps of the municipality / local civic area
• Creation of spatial property data base, wherein the plot boundaries and house footprints are all efficiently captured and represented
• Initiation of property surveys to collect the up-to-date property details such as address, owner details, tenant details, plot area, built-up area, no. of floors, floor area, front road width, facility status (water and electricity) etc.
• Undertake comparisons between the recorded property details for taxation and the current on-the-ground status and furnish the difference report for creation of an updated database
• Linking the collected property data with the GIS spatial data
• Development of web-based GIS application for property database repository management and tax assessment
• Pilot implementation at one word
• Solution finding and application update
• Enterprise wide Implementation after the success of the pilot phase
• User Training
• Handover to Municipality authority
• Support & Maintenance
• Annual update of the GIS database

An efficient GIS can not only help local civic bodies efficiently monitor property taxes, but also facilitate sharing of information between various departments, resulting in a better local governance.

About AABSyS

AABSyS is a leading provider of GIS, CAD and application software services with a long standing experience and expertise in supporting global customers including civic bodies. For more information on our services in Land Information Management, please visit the Land Information Management solutions section in our website http://goo.gl/NPELWq. For more detailed information on how GIS can help in revenue generation for civic bodies, write to us: info@aabsys.com