THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Always blamed for its callousness in tax collection and often pulled up by audit officials, the City Corporation is currently engaged in the business of fixing its property tax collection in the right way. It has begun assessing buildings which have not entered its tax books so far, including the Secretariat and Legislative Assembly. Ever since the assessment began three weeks ago, more than 100 buildings, including government offices, private buildings, jewellery shops and households, have been found to be leading a tax-free life. It is as part of regularising the unauthorised buildings for tax collection that the Corporation first began to check the background and status of many buildings in the city. The Finance Committee has decided to slap ‘u’ number on buildings found to be unauthorised, so that it could levy tax on them. Over the years, the unauthorised buildings were not given TC and were not asked to pay taxes too. But that has been putting too many holes in the income of the Corporation, which is why the ‘u` number was decided upon. However, the documents showed that many buildings in the city were yet to be assessed for tax collection, including the Secretariat and Legislative Assembly. "In the past few weeks, we have identified more than 100 cases and assessed them for tax collection. While the Corporation is blamed for not perfecting tax collection, the point missed is that often government officers are in the line of private buildings in paying taxes,’’ said G Happykumar, Deputy Mayor. That means, the government would have to find a hefty amount to pay the dues, which is not likely to happen. According to Happykumar, many buildings in Technopark and outside the campus, like the new Infosys building, were only assessed recently. The same is the case regarding a number of jewellery shops in and around East Fort and along the main roads in the city which have been found to be evading taxes as they were not assessed. The Corporation officials who were busy pinning the common tax-payers for the dues have now got a reason to turn their attention to the bigwigs who find no reason to pay taxes. The Corporation Council, as soon as it assumed power, had asked its bill collectors at ward-level to wake up and go around collecting money. They were also asked to submit a list of the defaulters. It is based on this information filed by them that the Town Planning Department and Revenue Department have now begun assessment of buildings in the city and giving away ‘u’ numbers.
Comments
0 comment