The civic body recorded a collection of whopping Rs 88 crore as property tax by the end of 2021-22. While it fell short of the target of Rs 100 crore, the corporation recorded around 17% increase in property tax collection when compared to the previous year.
The corporation has an annual demand of Rs 90 crore and collects 70-80% annually. According to corporation officials, the collection of Rs 88 crore is unprecedented in the history of the civic body. “It assumes significance due to a lot of reasons. The collection came in the backdrop of two Covid affected years when frequent lockdowns affected the people’s lives. Then there was the tax fraud issue and people were sceptical about paying tax. However, we overcame all such hurdles and registered record collection,” a corporation official said.
The corporation secretary had earlier issued a circular to the revenue staff which listed down various on-going measures to attain the target of Rs 100 crore. The civic body had started updating the list of tax defaulters on a monthly basis in 2021.
Besides, action was taken with regard to filing of statements in tax related legal cases which had been dragging on for years. One crucial step was taken in identifying all the mobile towers in the city and it was found that the corporation was receiving tax from only 217 towers out of the total 431.
The corporation has estimated that by levying tax on a retrospective effect up to four years, three times the tax amount can be collected from mobile towers. This was expected to yield the corporation additional revenue of Rs 2.5 crore.
The revenue wing of the city corporation had also identified over 700 defaulters who owed corporation tax dues above Rs 1 lakh. The cumulative dues from these defaulters were estimated at Rs 44 crore. By the end of 2021, the corporation managed to collect around Rs 17 crore following the updation of tax database in all the wards.
In 2020-21, the total demand of the city corporation in property tax was Rs 96.8 crore and the corporation could collect Rs 75.8 crore which was the highest collection of property tax since 2016-17.
The corporation had not crossed Rs 70 crore in collection in the past five fiscals.
The signs of significant hike in online payment of tax were evident from November 2021. The month had recorded a collection of Rs 9.75 crore which is more than double the amount he corporation had collected in the same month in 2020.
