Punjab tax authorities reject property survey data

LAHORE:

Punjab’s tax authorities are unhappy with the outcome of a property valuation exercise five years in the making, The Express Tribune has learnt.

According to senior Punjab Excise and Taxation officials, the department’s field staff carrying out a survey of residential and commercial buildings in the province has been unable to collect adequate information to prepare a valuation table for new property tax rates. Subsequently, a departmental committee overseeing the exercise rejected the sample survey data as insufficient, they said.

The department has been surveying residential and commercial buildings across Punjab to track how rent amounts have changed from five years ago in order to update property tax rates. The exercise, under way since the beginning of January, also seeks to identify which property units should fall under the tax net.

On Thursday, the various focal officials appointed for carrying out the task submitted sample survey results for their respective divisions to a director-level committee constituted by Director General Excise Sohail Shehzad. Upon reviewing the sample data, the committee found it to be ‘inadequate and non-standard’.

“The samples presented to us in the meeting were not in line with the criteria prescribed for the survey,” said committee head Additional DG Excise Rao Shakeelur Rehman. “According to the sample, rents had risen in some areas and gone down in some – overall, it depicted a between 30% and 35% increase in rent – but no evidence to back up the data was presented with any sample,” he said.

After rejecting the samples, the committee members prepared a pro forma to be used by all officers carrying out the survey. Staff tasked with conducting the survey was also directed to collect rent data from at least 10 buildings in each locality area, along with copies of receipts or documents validating the rent amount being charged.

“We set a January 27 deadline for all directors to submit the final data. Once we have that information, recommendations for the valuation table will be proposed to the DG Excise,” Rehman said.

There are, at present, more than 50,000 locality areas across Punjab. During the meeting, the committee was told that some locality areas are too small for obtaining 10 samples. An even difficult task, the committee was informed, was obtaining proof of rent as many tenants and landlords do not keep records of rent transactions.