Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has successfully launched GIS-based Centralized Urban Immovable Property Tax Management and Information System (CUIPTMIS), thereby transforming the whole property tax regime into an automated, transparent and robust mechanism. A ceremony, in this regard, was held here at Chief Minister’s House Peshawar on Friday with the caretaker Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Justice (R) Syed ArshadHussain Shah as chief guest. Besides caretaker provincial ministers Ahmed RasoolBangash and Engr. Ahmed Jan, Secretary Excise and Taxation Syed Fayyaz Ali Shah, Secretary Local Government Daud Khan and other relevant officials attended the ceremony. The newly launched Management and Information System (MIS) has been completed at a total cost of Rs 95.898 million. Initially, the project has been launched for two districts of the province; Nowshera and Abbottabad, and would soon be replicated in rest of the districts of the province.
Under the project, 50938 new property units have been identified in district Abbottabad and Nowshera, and thus, total number of property units in the two districts has increased to 90,938. Resultantly, the demand of tax revenue in both of the districts has also increased from Rs 69 million to Rs 123 million in Nowshera and from Rs. 83 million to Rs. 143 million in Abbottabad. Addressing the ceremony, the chief minister has lauded the Excise and Taxation department for launching this important project, and said that the newly developed system will not only improve tax collection and management mechanism but also facilitate the tax payers in the province by providing an integrated online system and grievance redress mechanism. The addition of new property units in the valuation list will also result in revenue growth for the province, he remarked and added that the complicated mechanism of tax payment has always been a serious problem for citizens, due to which they were hesitant to paying taxes; but now through the newly established UIP Tax Management and Information System, they can pay taxes from their home by using online tax paying facility. On the occasion, he hoped that the Excise department will continue to adopt technologically advanced techniques in the future as well, so as to further advance its tax collection and public facilitation system.
