Online taxpayers’ surge catches BBMP off-guard

Bengaluru: While tech-savvy administrator T.M Vijay Bhaskar is busy chalking out plans to increase revenue especially property tax, there seems to be a setback already. Unlike previous years, the BBMP is seeing a massive rush of citizens paying property tax online. But the civic agency seems to be ill-equipped to handle this surge as many online tax payers have complained that there were problems in online transactions in the last week of April.

According to BBMP, it has seen a record increase in the number of citizens paying property tax online. In April alone, as many as 2.26 lakh Bengalureans paid property tax online. Last year, around the same time, only 1.56 lakh people had made online tax payment. While this year a record amount of Rs 136.35 crore has been collected online, last year Rs 93.41 crore was generated through property tax paid online.

So far, 6.20 lakh people have paid property tax amounting to Rs 631 crore. On April 29 alone, more than 20,000 Bengalureans paid the tax online. Handling such a significant increase in online users however seems to be beyond the civic agency’s technical capacity.  Many online tax payers rushed to the BBMP office to pay tax after failing to pay online.

“On Thursday (April 30), which was also the last date to get 5 per cent rebate on property tax, I tried to pay property tax online. The transaction was not successful, and even after many hours, I was unable to pay the tax. The servers seemed to be down and I decided to pay the tax at the BBMP office. I had to wait for an hour in a queue in the local BBMP office,” complained Pramoda, a resident of Srinagar in city. On April 29, as many as 59,843 Bengalureans paid tax, while 20,019 citizens have made online tax payments.