There is some good news to property tax payers as the State government has announced waiver of interest on arrears and interest on current year dues as one-time measure in all municipal corporations including GHMC, municipalities and nagar panchayats, provided the assessee pays the total arrears and the current year tax before March 31.
The department of municipal administration and urban development (MAUD) issued orders based on a request from the commissioner and director of municipal administration (CDMA), urging the state government to waive interest on arrears and on current year (2015-2016) dues, provided the assessee pays the total arrears and current year property tax on or before March 31.
The MAUD also directed the ULBs that if interest is already paid by tax payers, it would be adjusted towards the future property tax payments (2016-17). No cash refund will be made.
The total interest waiver on arrears and current year property tax demand for GHMC is Rs 532.57 crore. As many as 6,24,709 property tax payers would be benefited by the waiver.
They have to pay a nominal amount of Rs 101 per annum. Speaking to reporters, mayor Bonthu Rammohan and GHMC commissioner B Janardhan Reddy appealed to all property tax payers to pay their dues at the earliest. GHMC hopes to achieve the tax collection target of Rs 1,100 crore.
They urged the citizens to pay property tax on time and contribute to the development of Greater Hyderabad as a global city. Citizens can pay their property tax at any of the 19 Citizens Service Centres located in the GHMC head office or the 18 circle offices, or through 560 bank branches and Mee- Seva Centres, they added.
GHMC has so far collected Rs 575 crore and the remaining Rs 525 crore need to be collected before March 31. The government has now given sufficient time to pay the dues. Efforts are being made to collect tax dues from Central and State government properties which amounts to Rs 170 crore. Railways tops the list with Rs 44.08 crore, TSPDCL (Rs 17.48 crore), Transco (Rs 2.47 crore), TSRTC (Rs 9.82 crore), HMDA (Rs 1.37 crore) and BSNL (Rs 2.77 crore) are the major property tax payers in public sector.
Source: The New Indian Express