The grandiose plans of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to outsource tax collection to private parties has been put on hold.
The GHMC, which had invited requests for proposal (RFP) from agencies in July for collection of all types of revenue that include property tax, trade licence, advertisement tax, estate collection and profession tax using hand-held computers (HHCs), has now kept the proposal under abeyance for administrative reasons.
Last month, bill collectors and tax inspectors and some GHMC unions staged a demonstration in front of the the municipal corporation’s head office in protest against the proposal to outsource collection of five revenue services to private agencies stating that it was a unilateral decision and detrimental to the interests of GHMC.
Anticipating problems, GHMC officials have decided to keep the proposal in abeyance on administrative grounds.
GHMC has planned to automate services online using HHCs to enable collection of various taxes by a single bill collector and wanted the agencies to provide the HHC with necessary operating system and application software for all types of revenue collection using a single device. One single device is to be provided for every docket (about 4,000 property assessments).
At present, GHMC is collecting property tax using HHC. All the five zones have been divided into 334 dockets, each docket with 4,000 assessed properties and each docket is provided with a bill collector equipped with a HHC.
GHMC has five zones, 18 circles, 150 wards and several localities under wards. GHMC currently collects taxes, fees, penalty from the citizens under different heads. Each ward or combination of wards will have an Inspector and Bill Collector.
It can be recalled that in the past, Corporation has outsourced advertisement tax collection a couple of private agencies, but these agencies have cheated the GHMC of a few crores of rupees.
The agencies breached all the terms and conditions and, in the end, the municipal corporation has been left with no choice but to cancel the contract. GHMC employees have been collecting the advertisement tax since then.