Get ready to pay infra and waste cesses

Get ready to pay infra and waste cesses
Remit It Along With SAS
S Kushala | TNN

Bangalore: When the property tax collections open up, along with the revised SAS, you will have additional two cesses to pay — infrastructure and solid waste management.
Seven years after the infrastructure and solid waste management (SWM) cesses were mooted and given legal sanction, the BBMP will roll them out this
year. While infrastructure cess will
be levied annually on motor vehicles for the use of
roads, flyovers
and underpass, the
solid waste management cess will be collected monthly
from households, commercial establishments and hotels towards garbage disposal.
The legislature had passed a Bill empowering corporations to collect a maximum of Rs 500 towards infrastructure cess and Rs 1,000 towards SWM. Infrastructure cess varies from Rs 50 to Rs 500 depending on the type of vehicles and solid waste management cess ranges from Rs 10 - Rs 600.
The BBMP, after looking at several modalities for collection, has decided to collect the cesses when it opens up the property tax collections this year. The method: self-declaration of vehicles, the SAS way. “While the property owners will declare their vehicles and pay the infrastructure cess when they make tax remittance, others (motor vehicle owners/tenants) will fill up a form with name, address, locality, class of vehicle, registration number, which will be available in the revenue offices, citizen centres and designated banks, making voluntary declaration and pay the infra cess,’’ officials said.
The government had asked the city corporations to come up with ways of collecting cesses. Though several channels were explored — through insurance agents or at the RTO while registering the vehicles — the BBMP has finally zeroed in on the self-declaration scheme. However, the authorities will obtain soft copy of the vehicle details from the RTO and update the data as and when the cess is paid.
The solid waste management cess will have to be paid the same way — since this is a monthly cess, people can pay it annually and get 5% rebate. The funds collected towards the cesses will be pooled in a separate fund and will be ploughed back into exclusive infrastructure projects.
THE CESSPOOL
Infrastructure cess to be levied on vehicles annually; to be paid along with SAS
Property owners have to make self-declaration of vehicles
Tenants owning vehicles have to fill up separate form and pay cess
Solid waste management cess to be levied on households, commercial establishments and hotels
Can be paid monthly or annually Bangalore better off
The two new cesses imposed by the government add to our burdens at a time when economic stress is rising. But you may like to consider the table below, which shows that Bangaloreans pay least per capita towards municipal finance. The estimate by the Reserve Bank indicates that we pay substantially lower than even smaller cities like Surat and Pune. And the comparison becomes worse when we consider the expanded BBMP area.
CESS RATES NOTIFIED BY GOVERNMENT
Solid waste management
cess to be paid per month
Residential buildings: Rs 10 for plinth area less than 1,000 sqft; up to 3,000 sqft Rs 30; more than 3,000 sqft Rs 50.
Commercial buildings: Plinth area less than 1,000 sqft Rs 50; plinth area within 5,000 sqft Rs 100; exceeding 5,000 sqft Rs 200.
Industrial buildings: Plinth area not less than 1,000 sqft Rs 100; plinth area within 5,000 sqft Rs 200; exceeding 5,000 sqft Rs 300.
Hotels, kalyana mantaps, nursing homes: Plinth area not less than 10,000 sqft Rs 300; plinth area within 50,000 sqft Rs 500; exceeding 50,000 sqft Rs 600.
Infrastructure cess to be
paid per year 2-wheelers - Rs 50 3-wheelers - Rs 100 Four-wheelers - Rs 300 Passenger vehicles - Rs 400 Goods carriages - Rs 500