IKM to get 2.5% of property tax collected for funding digitisation activities

Local bodies will henceforth transfer 2.5% of every property tax transaction to the Information Kerala Mission (IKM) to help fund its ongoing digitisation process of local governance.

An order to this effect was issued last week. The IKM has piloted the KSMART platform for digital delivery of services across all local bodies.

The Executive Director of the IKM had in May submitted a proposal to the government to make available a fixed share of the property tax collected by the local bodies as the IKM had been finding the existing fund allocations insufficient for its digitisation activities. The mission had also argued that the property tax collection in the local bodies witnessed a considerable jump after the deployment of the KSMART platform developed by the IKM.

Following this, the government appointed a committee to study the issue. The committee recommended that considering the digitisation work that the IKM is involved in, an amount equivalent to 2.5% of the total amount can be auto debited from each property tax transaction.

With the government approving this recommendation, the IKM will make the necessary changes for auto debit in the software.