Evaluating the potential of using Geo- information technology for property taxation in Kira town council.

Abstract

Property taxation is one of the commonest revenue sources for local governments worldwide and Uganda is no exception. This tax is boosted by the rapid rate of urbanization which has seen an increase in urban populations triggering investments into the real estate sector. This tax in most local governments in Uganda like Kira Municipality has failed to attain its full potential. This is mainly attributed to the manual systems which are used in the property taxation process. Striving to attain efficiencies in such systems where traditional survey methods are used to collect, store and dispense property information is challenging. Timely client service with authority’s limited resources and poor location details is hard. Regular updates, tracking tax defaulters and trace out unauthorized and under taxed properties is hard and overall management decisions are quite time consuming. This makes paramount the importance of bringing Geo-Information Technologies (GIT) into the local government’s day-to-day workings, especially the need to capture, store, retrieve, update and manage large amounts of data within their system. Further, GIT capabalities such as data visualization and trends analyze in spatial context can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the taxation procedures. Geographic Information System (GIS) and mobile GIS provide a whole new dimension to property taxation as they bring the spatial elements to it. This project aims to integrate GIT in property taxation through development of a database and a proto-type mobile GIS client service app for Kira municipality. With this, administration can easily track property data collection, assessment, new developments, improvements and defaulters while at the same time bringing the service closer to the people. Most importantly, the database provides opportunities to perform various analyses on spatial and attribute data, thus providing a base for decision- making, future planning and streamlining the workflow of the property tax.