The Greater Chennai Corporation has slashed the penalty on late payment of property tax from 2% to 0.5% in view of Covid-19.
The civic body had earlier announced that those who paid their taxes between April 1 and 15 for the first half year (April to Sept) and between October 1 and 15 for the second half year (October-March) would get a rebate of 5%.
It then said those who delayed the payment would have to pay a penalty of 2%. However, on Thursday, the civic body slashed it to 0.5%.
“We urge everyone to pay their taxes early. Keeping the difficulties faced by people and also seeing the cooperation from people who are paying their taxes on time, we decided to slash the penalty that was levied,” said Meghantha Reddy, deputy commissioner, Revenue.
As per the last update on tax collection in October, the civic body collected Rs 159 crore from 12.43 lakh assessments against the total demand of Rs 373 crore for the half year. This collection is from August this year.
