OTS scheme deadline ends, pay property tax with 10% penalty

Charanjit Singh Teja

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Amritsar, January 1

With the end of deadline for the one-time settlement (OTS) scheme for property tax, owners of defaulting properties would have to pay a heavy penalty with pending tax from today onward. The state government had introduced a one-time settlement scheme for property owners who were not paying taxes from 2013-14 to the current year and had defaulted. However, a large number of residents got the benefit of OTS and paid the pending property tax without penalty and interest. Still, thousands of property owners never paid the tax during the past 10 years.

Aiming to collect the pending property tax, the government offered an OTS scheme which ended on December 31. Now, the MC would impose a 10 per cent penalty on current tax (2023-24) and collect 18 to 50 per cent interest on the pending tax of previous years.

To facilitate taxpayers on the last date, the MC offices including the main branch at Ranjit Avenue and regional Common Facility Centres (CFC) remained open on weekend. On the last Saturday, Rs 19 lakh was collected and on Sunday, around Rs 25 lakh was collected by the MC staff. A total of Rs 31.45 crore has been collected during this fiscal year till date. The Municipal Corporation aims to collect a total of Rs 45 crore in property tax by March 31.

There are around 3.5 lakh properties in the city. The government has exempted property tax on small houses which are less than 125 square yard. As per the MC survey conducted in 2017, the MC claims that around 1.5 lakh households are eligible to pay the tax. During the past a few years, the MC increased the number of property tax payers up to 1.20 lakh but still more than 30,000 tax payers are not paying the tax. The MC had identified around 19,000 property tax defaulters and also issued sealing notices to around 14,000 defaulters this year.