Property tax: MC seals buildings of defaulters

Charanjit Singh Teja

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 21

The Municipal Corporation (MC) has decided to seal buildings of property tax defaulters. Today, teams of the property tax wing of the MC sealed two commercial buildings.

Over 1.5 lakh property owners do not pay the tax.

As per information, there are a total of 3.5 lakh properties in the city. The 1.93 lakh properties come under the property tax ambit.

Officials of the MC said only owners of 38 thousand buildings had paid tax in the previous year. The property tax wing does not approach house owners and small business establishments due to a shortage of staff and infrastructure.

The MC officials target major commercial establishments to collect bigger amounts with less efforts.

This year, the MC had targeted to collect Rs 35 crore property tax from the city. It had collected Rs 18.95 crore in the last fiscal. The property tax wing has collected Rs 14.28 crore till date during the current financial year.

The officials of Property tax wing feel that the collection target of Rs 35 crore given by MC was not realistic.

“The government has exempted the tax of several categories of property. Around 45 per cent property owners not comes under its ambit. The remaining are not approachable as the MC has been facing a shortage of staff. They only approach major defaulters. Not only this, the employees of the property tax wing were deployed on election duties for two months. How they will achieve their targets,” said an official.

The property tax is one of the major sources of revenue of the MC. The employees of the property tax wing alleged that the Department of Local Bodies has fixed the target as per the expenditure. The target could not be achieved as the government has exempted several categories from tax.