The civic body has planned an auction of tax defaulters’ properties in December. The administration will auction 202 properties to recover the tax.
Even after several notices, these tax defaulters have not paid. The administration has given them time to clear the dues by December 20. The auction will be carried out if they do not pay by then. It will be held online, PMC administrator Vikram Kumar said.
The administration had sealed over 1,300 properties over defaults. The remaining 1,100-odd will go under the hammer in a phased manner in the next few months. The civic body hopes to mop up nearly Rs 60 crore after the auction, and it is the last resort to recover the tax.
Other options include the issuance of notices and sealing the property for a temporary period. When no payment is received, PMC takes the property into its possession and changes the ownership name to itself in the 7/12 extracts.
After attachment, the civic administration auctions the property in an online bidding process. The civic administration started a drive to seal 40 properties in the four days since the action commenced.
But activists want the administration to act against big defaulters. “The PMC should show consistency in its action which should be taken against the establishments that have large tax defaults. There are amnesty schemes for defaulters, but even then, many property owners have not paid their dues. Stringent action against them is a must,” Vivek Velankar of Sajag Nagrik Manch, a citizens’ group, said.
The PMC has set a target of Rs 2,318.15 crore for property tax collection in 2023-24. The civic administration also expects to get nearly Rs 300 crore from the water tax collected from residential properties as a component of property tax taking the total expected revenue from property tax to Rs 2,618.15 crore.
After the abolition of octroi and local body tax (LBT), the civic administration is left with very limited options like property tax for revenue generation.