Registration for local body tax (LBT) to start today

The Pune Municipal Corporation is going to start registration of traders and shop owners for collection of local body tax (LBT) from Thursday. Announcing this at a press conference, municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak ensured that though collection of LBT will start from April 1, prices of essential goods as well as semi-luxury goods will remain the same.

“The LBT rate applicable to goods will not be above the rate of value added tax. The commodities which are not attracted by octroi will be exempted from the LBT,” said Pathak.

Pathak added that in order to implement the LBT collection, the registration will begin of traders, companies and shop owners whose annual turnover is more than Rs1 lakh and import goods in Pune is not less than Rs5,000.

The PMC has made the facility of registration available at its 14 ward offices and citizen facilitation centres across the city. So far, the civic body has collected data of around 3.75 lakh proposed LBT payers from the VAT and shop act network. It has also conducted awareness campaign for traders about LBT.