The Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) has served notices to over 1,450 big property tax defaulters with total dues amounting to over Rs160 crore and given them an ultimatum of 15 days to clear their dues.
Each of the big defaulters has dues worth over Rs2.5 lakh. “If they fail to pay dues within 15 days, the final notices will be served before issuing warrants for confiscation of properties,” said an NMC official.
The NMC has started a drive to meet its property tax collection target of Rs210 crore for the current fiscal. So far, NMC has collected property tax amounting to Rs115 crore and it is yet to collect Rs95 crore to meet this target in the next seven months.
During the previous financial year, the civic body had collected Rs188 crore of property tax, highest in the last 40 years of the establishment. As per guidelines of the centre’s 15th finance commission, the civic body has to collect property tax amounting to a total of Rs 210 crore. NMC will get a government grant under the commission only after it meets the collection target.
NMC officials said that the total property tax dues are estimated at Rs390 crore. NMC has decided to target big tax defaulters with dues over Rs 2.5 lakh each.
NMC officials said they will also target other big tax defaulters owing over Rs 10,000 in phases.
“Our target is to meet the property tax collection target and several measures are being undertaken by the department for the same. The measures include bringing new properties under the tax net, finding the properties being used for commercial purposes without the ‘change-in-use’ permission by the civic body,” said NMC officials.