Property tax defaulters to soon get recovery notices

Deepak.Yadav@timesofindia.com

Chandigarh: All property tax defaulters of the city should now be ready to receive recovery notices with penalty and interest amounts either by the end of this month or at the start of the next , as the civic body has started the process to compile the list of all property tax defaulters. Those who have failed to pay the tax amount in the stipulated period of two months will have to pay the tax amount with 25% penalty along with 12% interest on the overall tax amount. Since the entire staff of the tax branch is in the last-leg of exercise to complete the process of compiling the data of the received taxpayers' amount, sources said now the entire focus would be on the defaulters to receive the tax amount from them.

Since separate lists of both residential and commercial categories of defaulters will be prepared while sending the notices, sources have confirmed that maximum tax defaulters had been identified in the residential category, as compared to the commercial category. Though few cases of the tax recoveries of the govt agencies are also there, which will be raised with the departments concerned too to get the tax amounts.

“The authority has identified approximately 70,000-75,000 tax defaulters, including both residential and commercial categories, who refrained from paying the tax amount by taking the benefit of the rebate period. The department concerned will first give them recovery notice, under which a sufficient time will be given to the defaulters to pay the tax amount, failing which stern action will be taken against them. Like previous years, the property tax defaulters of the commercial category can face the consequences up to the sealing of the property and specific clauses have been given in the act in this regard, whereas in residential category, the decision to disconnect water supply was decided last year to recover the tax amount from residential category,” a senior official of the MC told TOI.

Since some of the cases of the property tax recovery are also under litigation. Sources in the MC revealed that legal process was already going on in such cases to bring them to the logical end as soon as possible to get the tax amount. Besides that, few cases of amount settlements are also there, which the department concerned is matching its records with the record of the taxpayers to settle them.

Box:

Highest ever: Revenue collected rs61 cr

The MC has collected revenue of over Rs 61 crore, a highest one in the rebate period in the history of the MC, in the two-month rebate period. As per the records of the civic body authority, out of the received tax amount, the maximum amount of over Rs 37.21 crore came from commercial properties of the city, while the remaining amount of over Rs 23.79 crore was fetched from the residential properties of the city. In the two months' rebate period, the MC gave 20% rebate on residential and 10% rebate on commercial properties. Since there are approximately 1.45 lakh property taxpayers in Chandigarh, a total of 74,142 taxpayers paid the tax amount in this two-month rebate period to the authority.