Property tax: Commercial units in Jalandhar city face sealing

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Jalandhar, May 22

The property tax wing of the Municipal Corporation will be sealing 250-300 commercial properties in the coming days for not paying the tax. A list of the defaulters has been made, and shockingly, among these, there are some defaulters who haven’t paid their tax for the last seven-eight years. For last some years, the department has not been able to meet the target.

Notices have also been sent to numerous commercial property owners. Since the start of the financial year 2022, the department has recovered Rs 1.8 crore as property tax. Last year, the target of recovering Rs 42 crore was not met and the civic body managed to collect only Rs 30 crore. In 2020, Rs 29 crore were recovered against the target of Rs 40 crore. In previous years, too, situation remained same.

There are about 1.7 lakh taxable properties in the city, which nearly 40,000 are commercial ones. The officials said the focus always remain on recovering taxes from commercial properties like malls, showrooms shops, schools etc.

Inspectors have been going to the field to recover property tax and defaulters who have not paid the tax were being served notices under Section 112 of the Municipal Corporation Act, to which the owner must give a reply within three days, failing which another notice of sealing the property is served under Section 138 of the Municipal Corporation Act.

Superintendent of the property tax wing Bhupinder Singh said the MC Commissioner Deepshikha Sharma has directed the officials to ensure that tax be recovered from every commercial property and none should be left.