With around 15 days remaining in the current financial year, coimbatore corporation has collected 43% of outstanding property taxes.
The corporation had managed to collect only 38% of tax arrears last year. In the beginning of the current financial year, the arrear amount was 103 crore, of which 44.56 crore has been collected so far.
Corporation commissioner M Prathap said they used public announcement systems to give strict warning to defaulters. “Tax collectors have been conducting camps to collect arrears in different areas. They made door-to-door collection in some places. Commercial buildings owned by defaulters who willfully refused to pay taxes were sealed. Such actions helped to collect arrear amounts which were pending for up to 10 years.”
He said they are confident of crossing 90% collection of the property tax for the current financial year. “The property tax estimation for the current financial year is 355.46 crore, out of which officials have collected 296.43 crore, 83.4% of the estimation. Our target is to collect 95% of the estimation.”
“We conducted special camps at weekends in residential areas, which helped in improving the collection. In fact, a whopping 90 crore was collected in February month alone.”
The south zone lags behind other four zones in collection numbers, he said “While other zones have gone past the 85% mark, the south zone has not even reached 80% so far.”
Meanwhile, 95% of the professional tax and 58% of water charges for the current financial year have been collected.