The phenomenon of Urban Immovable Property Tax (UIPT) regime is continuously evolving in developing countries and is essential for sustainable metropolitan well-being. This precedent in Pakistan was set by Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department, Government of Punjab in consultation with the Urban Unit, a subsidiary organization of Government of Punjab. The main objective was to update manual records of Urban Immovable Property Tax (UIPT) towards robust and state of the art Management Information System integrating with Geographical Information System (GIS) based monitoring dashboard for all the districts of Punjab.
Total number of property units and the gross demand increased due to GIS based survey, standardized assessments and revised valuation table introduced as on 01-08-2014. Since then, the Urban Unit is engaged with the department under a separate Service Level Agreement (SLA) as technical arm for continuous support and services and to keep the UIPT operations smooth. This success resulted in the following benefits: - 24/7 availability of the system - Strong monitoring & evaluation mechanism - Increased efficiency and effectiveness of the work done - Removal of trust deficit in public (taxpayers) - Increased reliability by transparency - Enriched decision support system (DSS) - Integration for easy tax payments (Epay) - Various public facilitation provisions hosted on official website of the department - Centralized operations and reduced workload by single click process
