Chennai: Facing strong backlash from residents across the city over the inflated property tax bills this week, Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) suspended its revised property tax for the ‘under-assessed’ properties on Thursday.“After carefully examining the representations, GCC has decided to suspend the tax revision. As a result, the property tax for the affected assessments will be restored to the amount that was in force before the revision,” said GCC commissioner G S Sameeran in a statement. For taxpayers who have paid the revised tax amount, the excess amount will be adjusted as an advance payment towards their property tax dues for subsequent half-years.“The civic body had initiated the revision of property tax assessments for properties where the tax was found to be lower than the applicable assessment. However, several petitions were received from members of the public in the past few days seeking reconsideration of the revised assessments,” he said.Out of the 14 lakh residents in the city, nearly 3.5 lakh received reassessment notices, and some received bills up to 400% higher than their existing tax. As of Thursday, 30,520 people had paid the reassessed values to a tune of ₹11.1 crore.While GCC had said they were only redoing the under-assessed properties, those who made no deviations also faced the hike. People also questioned the ambiguity of the hike without prior notice and said they had been forced to pay the tax before Sept 30, alongside appealing.The elected GCC council too was not consulted. Mayor R Priya on Thursday said the commissioner did not consult the council.Deputy mayor Mahesh Kumar said that though the Union govt directed them to increase the tax by 6% annually, the DMK govt did not implement it every year, keeping in mind the people’s plight. “I asked for ₹2,000 crore worth of grants from the Tamil Nadu govt in the council. I’m not sure if it reached the CM. If it did, and he released the money, GCC need not have forced this reassessment. People wouldn’t have suffered,” he said.The corporation organised the drive under a World Bank-funded project through GIS satellite mapping of houses in 2020. GCC said that if these buildings were brought into the tax fold, it would have received ₹ 83 crore in revenue in addition to the corporation’s existing tax demand of ₹2,450 crore.
