The Nashik Municipal Corporation has recorded a steady rise in collection of property tax through online mode in the last five years — from 7% in the 2019-20 financial year to 57% in the current financial year (till September-end).
An NMC official, while talking to TOI, said the trend is encouraging. “This (online payment) is also facilitating the property taxpayers as they do not need to travel to the divisional offices of the NMC and stand in queues. It only takes a few minutes to pay the property tax online,” the official said.
“Now around 57% of the 5.30 lakh registered property owners across the city are paying their taxes online. In the current financial year, Rs 69 crore of the total Rs 122 crore property tax collection has come through online payment. The taxpayers get 1% concession in the total amount if they pay the bills online,” the official added.
Last year, the civic body had collected Rs 188 crore towards property tax, out of which 78 crore was paid online. This year, the civic body collected Rs 100 crore in the first three-and-a-half months of the current fiscal. “This is for the first time that the civic body has collected Rs 100 crore in the first 100 days of a financial year due to the concession given to the prompt taxpayers who pay their annual tax in one go,” the official said.
Apart from 1% rebate on the tax amount for those paying online, the prompt tax payers got a rebate of 8% and 6% for paying the full amount in April and May, respectively. The rebate was reduced to 3% for the month of June.
“We could not distribute property tax bills in the first two months of the current financial year, but the bills were available online,” the official said.
“We are also taking several measures to increase our revenue through property tax. The civic body is in the process of floating tenders to deploy private agencies for distributing property tax bills. This will help the prompt taxpayers for making their payments at the earliest,” the official added.
The civic body has set a property tax collection target of Rs 210 crore for the current financial year.
