Commercial property tax to go up 10% from April 1

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 13

Get ready to pay 10 per cent more commercial property tax from the next fiscal (April 1 onwards).

After the Municipal Corporation House approved the hike last year, Home Secretary Anurag Aggarwal has cleared the proposal. The file is expected to be cleared by UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore in a week.

“Following approval from the Home Secretary, we held a meeting yesterday to plan things to raise the tax from April. The proposal is expected to be through at the Administrator’s end in a week,” said a senior MC official.

Additional Commissioner Anil Kumar Garg, who heads the MC’s tax branch, told Chandigarh Tribune, “The commercial tax will be raised by 10 per cent from the next fiscal. The Home Secretary has approved it and it is now pending with the Administrator.”

On August 30 last year, the MC House had approved a 10 per cent increase in the property tax on commercial, industrial and institutional land and buildings.

The last revision of commercial property tax was done in 2004. While the rates were to be revised every five years, for the past nearly 10 years, these were not revised by the MC.

Last year, demand notices were sent to around 9,200 commercial defaulting assesses to clear their dues. Action is being initiated against them under Section 138 of the Punjab MC Act, 1976, as extended to the UT, Chandigarh, to attach their properties after issuing them final show-cause notices.

Major defaulters, including the PGI, railway station, companies at IT Park and the Lok Priya Buildwell Private Limited property on which the JW Marriot hotel has been built in Sector 35, were served notices earlier. Attachment orders with respect to several SCOs and Lok Priya Buildwell Private Limited were issued for not paying the amount. MC officials said this fiscal they had recovered Rs 25.50 crore by way of commercial property tax and Rs 8.77 crore by way of house tax. However, a huge amount was estimated to be still pending as the MC was yet to calculate it since it had not compiled the data.