As the two month (April and May) rebate period has ended on May 31, municipal corporation (MC), Chandigarh has received Rs 46.57 crore in property tax from both commercial and residential properties of the city. The received amount is quite significant for the authority, especially as the civic body has estimated Rs 80 crore from the property tax collection for the current financial year.
Buoyed by the response, recently Chandigarh administration had extended the rebate period till July 31. Owners of the residential properties will get 20% rebate over the total tax amount, while commercial properties will be able to avail 10% rebate, if they pay their amount till July 31. After that, they will have to pay 25% penalty over the entire amount and subsequently also have to pay 12% interest on the same.
According to the records, out of Rs 46.57 crore, Rs 32.18 crore have been received from commercial properties of the city, while Rs 13.18 crore have come from the residential properties. Besides that, the authority has also received Rs 68 lakh and Rs 14 lakh from book entry and title change fee, which has also been kept in the property tax recovery segment.
The record also shows that 49,378 taxpayers from the residential properties came forward to pay their tax, while 15,185 commercial tax payers paid their tax during this two months. The record also shows that maximum tax amount has come in May in both residential and commercial categories.
The authority has received high amount when compared to the last financial year’s two-month rebate period. During April and May 2021, the authority had received Rs 24.84 crore. Sources said this could be because due to Covid-19 pandemic, people were reluctant to pay the taxes, following which Chandigarh administration had given two months more.
Since around 15,000 fresh residential properties of the colonies of the city have been added from new financial year, the number of properties have increased to 1.29 lakh instead of the earlier 1.14 lakh. Out of these, 29,000 properties are in commercial category, while the remaining are under the residential segment.