Despite the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) offered a rebate, the civic body could have collected only Rs 48 crores property tax. As per the officials from the corporation, the collection is hardly five percent of the total estimated collection of property tax in the new civic body.
The civic body has given a rebate upto 15 percent for paying the property tax till July 31 which includes 5 percent for paying property tax online.
The civic body received a good response from citizens towards the end of the deadline for getting a rebate. The civic body had collected around Rs 22 crores in just a week time in the last week of July. “Despite a resistance from a section of residents on paying the property tax, we had seen a good response during the period rebate was offered,” said an official from PMC’s Property Tax department.
This is the first time that the civic body is collecting property tax since its inception in 2016. Earlier, residents were paying property tax to gram panchayat and service tax to CIDCO.
Recently, the civic body concluded hearings on issues raised related to property tax by a number of housing societies from Kharghar as they were opposing the retrospective tax collection.
As per the civic body’s record, there are around 73,997 property tax holders and the civic body had estimated to collect around Rs 1000 crores. “We could not even get 5 percent of the estimated,” said the official.
Many residents demanded that property tax should be collected when the proposal was passed in the general body. “The general body had passed a proposal of property tax collection on January 2019 with tax slabs. However, the civic body has sent a notice to citizens asking to pay property tax since the civic body came into existence,” said a resident from Kharghar. The civic body was formed in October 2016.
Leena Garad, a corporator from PMC raised the matter of dual tax collection and created awareness among residents. She opposed retrospective tax collection. Actually, a few areas under the PMC pay service charges for various facilities to CIDCO. Now, they say why do they pay multiple taxes.
According to senior civic officials, the corporation needs money to continue the development work and the property tax will be one of the major sources of revenue.
