Despite the one-time and ‘early bird’ schemes gaining traction, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) may yet again miss its property tax target of 2,000 crore in the current financial year.
So far, the GHMC has earned 1,522 crore in revenue through property tax. While bill collectors have been pressed into action to collect arrears from property owners, officials remain sceptical of achieving the remaining 478 crore target in 20 days. However, officials said the property tax collections did witness a substantial growth when compared to previous years.
The civic body earned 1,495 crore in 2021-22 and failed to achieve its target of 1,852 crore owing to Covid-19 pandemic. “We have already surpassed what was achieved in the last financial year. We are hoping to increase the revenue by another 300 crore as enforcement action has been taken against those with arrears and the flow of payments has seen a spike again since last month,” a GHMC official said.
Officials said the overall tax dues pending amongst residential, commercial and government properties stand at 8,000 crore. While the one-time scheme has been successful in reducing the arrears comparatively, several of them, mainly government entities, continue to be major tax defaulters.
However, considering the flying start in the early bird scheme in April 2022 which saw a 7% growth compared to previous year, the civic body could collect over 700 crore in the first month. The next spike in revenue came during November with the civic body reintroducing OTS.
There are a total of 17 lakh property taxpayers within the GHMC jurisdiction out of which a majority 76% (about 14 lakh) are residential and the rest commercial. “Daily reminders are being sent to the property owners who are yet to pay their dues. Also, bill collectors are going door-to-door to ramp up collections,” the GHMC official added.