Centre Slaps ‘Occupancy Tax’ On Tenants? Dubious Website Shares AI-Generated Fake News Report

Do tenants now have to pay an “occupancy or usage tax” along with their rent — 10% in urban areas and 5% in rural — as per an alleged reform in house tax policy? According to this viral article, the Central government’s latest move, purportedly prompted by a “revenue shortfall in local governance” and a “consequent reassessment of tax collection mechanisms”, has stirred concern among homeowners, who also face hiked rates, and tenants alike.

“The new house tax rule brings a significant policy shift—where responsibility for municipal revenue is being equally distributed between property owners and tenants. While the move may seem burdensome, it’s aimed at improving civic infrastructure and services across urban and rural landscapes. For many, this could mean budgeting more annually, but for the city as a whole, it might signal cleaner roads, better lighting, and improved maintenance. This article is based on publicly available information and announcements from various municipal bodies as of April 2025,” read the report, dated April 18, 2025, which also shares multiple tables supposedly breaking down the revised house tax rates for different categories of properties. The article has also been shared on X, triggering panic among users.

Fact Check

Newschecker first noticed that the “report” did not seem to have an official statement from the Union government nor the finance ministry, along with generic phrases and not sharing exact details such as naming the municipal bodies and urban centres that initially introduced the new rates, raising our doubts on the veracity of the report.

We then ran a keyword search for “house tax reform occupancy tax tenant,” which did not lead to any credible news reports nor official statement about such a decision. The news report apparently seems to be hosted on a website dedicated to an Agartala-based institution, Rajarshi College of Education & Skills.

Interestingly, on the home page of this website, we came across a disclaimer that stated: “Disclaimer: This website is not the official website of Rajarshi College of Education & Skills. We are independent bloggers aiming to provide general information about educational institutions. We are not affiliated with any college. You can visit the official Website at rajarshicollege.in.”

We then looked up the official website of the institution, affiliated to Tripura University and located in Bagbari, Lembucherra, Agartala, and its official Facebook page, linking the website, which shows posts as recently uploaded as on April 20, 2025, proving it to be the legitimate website. 

Newschecker next ran the viral article past Scam Detector, a major online tool for fraud prevention, which flagged the website as “Dubious. Very New. Suspicious’, with a low trust score of 2.8/100.

“The Scam Detector website validator gives rajarshicollege.co.in one of the lowest trust scores on the platform: 2.8. It signals that the business could be defined by the following tags: Dubious. Very New. Suspicious. We are confident about our score as we also partner with other high-tech, fraud-prevention companies that found the same issues. So, why this low score? We came up with the 2.8 score based on 53 aggregated factors relevant to rajarshicollege.co.in’s industry. The algorithm scored this website based on issues such as its creation date and high risk of phishing, spamming, and other factors noted in the Dubious. Very New. Suspicious. tags above. Long story short, we recommend staying away from this website,” read a review of the website, adding that the domain was created less than a month ago, while details such as owner name, address have been redacted.

Newschecker next ran the article past QuillBot, an AI-content detector, which stated 78% of the text is likely AI, while another similar tool, GPTZero, said the article would be considered AI-generated. Plagiarism detection tool Copyleaks said 96.8% of the text may be AI-generated, further proving that the report was not credible.

Also Read: West Bengal: TMC Leader Arguing With On-Duty Cop? No, Video From Tripura Shared With False Claim

Conclusion

An AI-generated fake news report stating that tenants now have to pay an occupancy tax shared as real, the website found to be dubious.

Source
www.rajarshicollege.co.in
Scam Detector tool
Quillbot tool
GPT Zero tool
CopyLeaks tool