The Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) has decided to bring as many as 59,000 new properties under the tax ambit from financial year 2020-21.
The civic body had identified these new properties during a survey conducted around a year ago. The NMC has already conducted hearing on objections by 10,000 properties, while hearing on the remaining properties will begin from next week.
Addition of these new properties is expected to increase the civic body’s revenue through property tax by around Rs 30 crore. The NMC had conducted a survey of new properties through a New Delhi-based private agency and had found a total of 4.88 lakh properties in the year 2018. The survey revealed the presence of around 59,000 new structures across the six divisions.
The civic later sent notices to owners of these new properties, asking them to pay the property tax. However, around 25,000 people took objections and filed written complaints with the civic body alleging that they were served inflated and faulty bills, while others complained that they bought the house in 2016, but got the property tax bills since 2012.
The issue was discussed for long during the general body meeting held in December 2018. Some corporators even claimed that the private agency had conducted the survey with the help of city students.
Following this, city mayor directed the civic administration to cancel all the notices of property tax sent to owners of new properties and conduct a new survey.
Accordingly, municipal commissioner Radhakrishna Game had announced that property tax collection from these new properties would be started only after a hearing and proper verification is done. Of the 59,000 new properties, 21,000 properties have completion certificates and there were no issues with such properties.
“We have plans to bring these new properties under property tax net from the next financial year,” an NMC official said.
The NMC collected Rs 112 crore through property tax in the last financial year and is eyeing revenue of Rs 218 crore in the current fiscal. So far, the civic body has collected Rs 109 crore as property tax.
