Thiruvananthapuram: Service tax department has sent a show cause notice to the Corporation for the payment of a huge amount of money as service charges based on the Annual Financial Statements of 2011-2012, 2012-2013, 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. While sharing this during the council meeting on Tuesday, Deputy Mayor Rakhi Ravikumar admitted that there had been major errors while estimating AFS for these years. The show cause notice asks the Corporation to pay Rs 3.25 crore as service taxes for 2011-2012, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014.
For 2014-2015, it estimates Rs 77.91 lakh. But Ms Ravikumar said in the council meeting that a review of the AFS for 2011-2012 by a Chartered Accountant firm in the past few months revealed that the actual service charges would be much lesser. She said that there is a possibility that the service charges for 2012-2013, and 2013-2014, will also be much lesser. The CA will be paid Rs 4.95 lakh as fees for the job. Such errors could have been avoided if the Corporation had a finance officer, said BJP’s Thrikkannapuram councillor K. Anilkumar. Mayor V. K. Prasanth said the state government had already announced that corporations would have finance officers.
As the contract tenure of various officials, including the IT officer, working on a temporary basis was extended, Anilkumar said that the Corporation needs to demand its own IT officer and mechanical engineer. Mayor V K Prasanth said the government was considering to increase the staff, as per the new staff pattern of urban bodies. The meeting started with mayor congratulating the councillors and staff for achieving a plan expenditure of 68.6%, which according to him is the highest in the state. Earlier there were criticisms that the Corporation’s plan expenditure was below 40%. Anilkumar said that last year’s slip-ups should not be allowed to repeat.
