Kolkata civic body plans to simplify UAA form for property owners

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is set to ring in several changes in the Unit Area Assessment (UAA) method to make it more palatable to property owners. The civic body had introduced the new method of property tax calculation two years ago, but response has been tepid. After assuming office as deputy mayor, Atin Ghosh, who also holds the charge of assessment-collection department, asked officials to check out how the forms can be simplified. He had also suggested that assessment officials interact with property tax payers to find out why they were reluctant to move to the new system. On Wednesday, Ghosh held ameeting to take stock of the situation and assessed the wardwise response to UAA. At the meeting, officials suggested introduction of a simple policy to remove hurdles and attract more property owners into the UAA net. During discussion, Ghosh and civic officials agreed on the need to simplify factors like location, road width, age of the property and nature of occupation on which property tax is computed. “We need to look into the weightage of these factors that will determine the rate of tax. If need be, we will have to amend laws to give relief to tax payers by changing the weightage of these parameters,” said an official. The deputy mayor later said the self-assessment form (SAF) that a property owner needs to fill out will be simplified. The form currently comprises three pages, in which the property owner is required to fill in the details of the property. “We have gone through SAF and found some parts of it unnecessarily confusing. We have decided to break the three-page form into three sections for a property owner’s understanding,” Ghosh said.