Chennai: With a week remaining in the current fiscal, the Greater Chennai Corporation has collected a property tax to the tune of Rs 670 crore as on March 23.
The civic body also recorded a professional tax collection of Rs 290 crore. “We have collected '297 crore as professional tax last year. With a week to go, we will easily bag '350 before the end of financial year,” a corporation official said.
Meanwhile, the official also added that the property tax collection also increased and is set to overtake last year's collection. “We have collected Rs 670 crore. Last year's property collection stood at Rs 695 crore,” the official said.
Although the property tax collection target is Rs 725 crore, the Chennai Corporation revenue official expressed confidence of achieving the target. At the same time, the officials sounded pessimistically about the next year's target.
“According to the corporation budget, the property tax target for 2018-19 has been fixed at Rs 1,200 crore. But it is not possible and corporation's collectable tax demand stays within Rs 900 crore,”the official said.
Elaborating the fact, the official said that the current property tax demand is Rs 520 crore and uncollectable tax (properties under sub judice) have mounted to Rs 210 crore. The pending tax dues are Rs 120 crore in total.
“We do not understand how they fix the target of Rs 1,200 crore,”the official said.
Explaining the steps taken to increase tax collection, the official said the civic body has been sending SMS alerts to property owners daily.
“We also issued notices to defaulters and conducted camps. To teach long-term defaulters a lesson, we bested to ‘thandora’ before their buildings,” the official added.
