AMC threatens to sever water supply & drainage lines of tax defaulters; Rs540 cr tax pending.
Rush, if you have not paid your property tax since the time the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) came up with the old property tax formula. Your failure to pay property tax in time may leave your home without drinking water supply and drainage line! The civic body bosses have decided to become stricter from February 1 after their repeated efforts to collect the pending amount of Rs540 crore of property tax even after doling out various schemes for such residences, failed to yield the desired results.
Senior officials in the tax collection department say that the civic body will start cutting water supply and drainage connection lines if the residents do not adhere to the deadline and pay up pending property tax.
The AMC has no estimate of the number of properties that have failed to pay their taxes, but an estimate reveals that the tax yet to be collected totals to around Rs600 crore. By introducing different schemes and discounts from time to time, the civic body could collect only Rs60 crore of property tax as per the old formula.
A senior AMC official said, “The old formula of property tax was collected before 2001. The formula was based on houses let out on rent or on property used by owners. After 2001, the AMC introduced a new property tax formula which is based on age and area of property.”
Interestingly, the AMC has come up with concession of 50% to 70% reduction on property bills and settlement schemes which is around 13 times for old formula tax payers since 2001, but it still failed to collect tax from the citizens.
“Our prime effort is to seal the properties which have failed to pay property tax. The property tax drive is already going on. We held a meeting on Saturday morning to decide on what can be done to collect the pending amount and we decided to discontinue water and drainage connections for those places which the civic body cannot seal - for example, a hospital,” said another senior AMC official.
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