Flat owners to pay taxes on carpet area under UAA system

As a much needed relief to flat owners in the city, under the proposed Unit Area Assessment (UAA), the new system of assessing property tax, they will have to pay tax on the carpet area and not on super built area.

The Winter session of the Assembly had cleared the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and the new system of calculating property tax will be implemented from April, 2017.

To get the relief, flat owners will have to apply to KMC. KMC will also send letters to the flat owners regarding UAA. Till now, the flat owners had to pay property tax on super built area which included common area, garbage vat inside the housing complex etc and the rate was very high. The UAA will bring down their property tax as it will be calculated only on the carpet area. The location of the house, the road in front of the building, its distance from market, bus stand, Metro station will be taken into consideration. 

The areas where infrastructure is not developed, people will have to pay less tax. The UAA is likely to augment KMC’s revenue as the buildings constructed in Jadavpur, Behala and Garden Reach which are called added areas in KMC parlance will be brought under property tax net. The CPI(M) leaders of these areas did not allow KMC to calculate tax, so thousands of flats which came up after 1985 are not paying KMC tax. Under UAA, they will be brought under the tax net. 

However, the owners of old buildings said they would launch a movement against KMC’s decision. They maintained that under the new system, they would have to pay more property tax. A senior civic official said that the owners of many old buildings in North and South Kolkata were paying less than Rs 2,000 as property tax per year. He said the tax of the old buildings would not go up alarmingly.

He said the KMC had organised six meetings where house owners had been asked to give their views. Many house owners attended the meeting and their views had been incorporated. “For the past six years, we have been informing the house owners about UAA and they have never been kept in the dark. We have also told them how the property tax will be calculated. The councillors, MLAs and the MPs have also been informed before the Bill was sent to the Assembly,” he said.