MC recovers Rs 41.5 cr property tax

The property tax department of the Municipal Corporation has recovered Rs 41.5 crore until now while the target is Rs 50 crore for this financial year.

Now, the department is regularly sending the SMSes to the defaulters and ads will also be run asking people to pay property tax.

"We will make an appeal to the public to deposit the tax," Superintendent of the department Bhupinder Singh said.

From April 1, 20 per cent penalty will be imposed and 1.5 per cent interest will be charged every month, he said.

Under the procedure for taking action against the defaulters, inspectors of the wing visit different areas to recover the tax. The defaulters are served notices under Section 112 of the Municipal Corporation Act. They have to file a reply within three days, failing which another notice of sealing the property will be served under Section 138 of the Act.

During the last financial year, the target was Rs 43 crore and the recovery was Rs 41 crore.

The One-Time Settlement (OTS) scheme for the recovery of tax also did not evoke good response. The civic body had recovered Rs 5 crore in the beginning from the government properties, but there was not much response from commercial properties.

The scheme was implemented to provide a major relief to defaulters who are otherwise supposed to pay 20 per cent penalty and 18 per cent interest on the outstanding principal amount of all previous fiscal years.