Commercial buildings: CDA plans to tax owners of shops, offices, Source

ISLAMABAD, June 13: The city managers on Wednesday approved a proposal aimed at bringing all owners of shops, offices and apartments in commercial buildings into municipal tax net.

The decision was taken at the Capital Development Authority (CDA) board meeting presided over by CDA Chairman Farkhand
Iqbal.

The meeting was informed that currently the CDA has been collecting taxes only from original owner of commercial building and not from hundreds of co-lessees or owners of shops, offices and apartments in them.

Similarly, these hundreds of owners of shops, offices and apartments sell their property and no transfer fee is given to the CDA because they have not been registered with it.

In Islamabad, all commercial property is auctioned or sold on the basis of 33-year lease by the CDA and these leases are renewed by the authority.

The CDA chairman Farkhand Iqbal told Dawn that lease agreements of hundreds of commercial plots have lapsed but the CDA could not renew them because of some violations.

He said if a co-lessee in the whole building committed violation of CDA laws, all others suffered because the authority did not renew such leases in view of individual violations.

“The lease extension fee is difficult to recover as there are a number of co-lessees in single allotment,” the proposal said.

Besides, no action such as transfer of allotment, approval of building plan and acceptance of general power of attorney can be taken until the lease period is extended. Due to this problem hundreds of the lessees suffer.

“A huge amount in millions of rupees has been held up on account of lease extension fee due to this problem, therefore it is proposed that we may recover the lease extension fee from the co-lessees according to their share,” said the CDA’s Director Estate Management Aslam Chaudhry.