Polls Near, Mc Goes Slow On Property Tax Recovery, Real Estate News, ET RealEstate
LUDHIANA: With possibilities of municipal corporation elections to be held in the coming month, the civic body employees are on their toes to prepare voter lists according to latest ward delimitation.
Additionally, the employees have slowed down their property tax recovery drive as earlier it planned to send the notices for the recovery of dues, but now they would send SMS to the defaulters. The employees also claim to recover pending house tax amount from the defaulters.
According to the MC officials, at least Rs 58 crore is outstanding towards house tax defaulters. Before the imposition of property tax, house tax was recovered from the commercial and industrial properties.
The outstanding amount was increasing with each passing year but since the launch of one-time settlement of property tax as well as house tax, the officials are pushing the staff to recover pending house tax amount.
One of the senior officials, requesting anonymity, claimed that they were told to compile the voters lists as soon as possible. He said apart from this, they were told to form teams for a survey to start under the ‘Mera Ghar Mere Naam’ scheme.
‘Need to reassess tax slabs’
The civic body officials claimed that the city has a capacity to generate at least Rs 250-crore property tax, but since the areas are not categorised properly, they are forced to recover the tax at lesser rates. Currently, there are three slabs and properties are divided into three zones — 1, 2 and 3, for which the tax rate is 6, 4 and 2 per cent, respectively.
“There are many properties which deserve to be in zone 1 and 2 but they are kept in zone 3, so lesser tax is being collected from them. Moreover, no matter where the industrial unit is located, the tax rate is similar. Therefore, the officials are now planning to reassess these slabs, for which a committee has also been constituted,” officials said.
