COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) has managed to collect around 45% of the current Financial Year’s (FY) tax demand by September 30, which is the first half of the FY.
Owing to the end of the first half of the FY on September 30, the CCMC announced a fine of 1% against late payments.
In order to ramp up the tax collections, the civic body has announced special camps on all Saturdays and Sundays till October 31. Sources said while the CCMC has managed to collect 45% of the current year’s demand, the officials have managed to collect only about 16.5% of the arrear demands. Overall, the CCMC has collected 38% of the tax demands till September 30.
Speaking to TNIE, CCMC Commissioner M Prathap said, “Due to the various measures taken by the civic body, we have collected around 38% of the overall property tax demand this year by September 30, adding that they have achieved their target collection for the current year’s demand by collecting 45% of the property tax amounts in the first half of the current FY.
“We are planning to collect an additional 10 to 15% of the property tax amount by this month through our 5% incentive scheme. Later, we plan to collect 5% of the tax demand every month, so that we can achieve our final target of 90% tax collection by the end of the financial year. Earlier, the tax collection works were slowed down as our officials including the bill collectors were engaged in the Kalaingar Magalir Urimai Thogai project works. Once the officials finished those works, we ramped up the tax collection work in the past month due to whcih we could collect around 45% of the current year’s demand,” he added.
When inquired about the collection of arrears, Prathap said that the multiple double entries in the tax payment servers and database had resulted in poor arrear figures.“Earlier, the CCMC used to have a separate server for tax payments, while all the other corporations in the state were integrated into a single server. Last year, the CCMC’s tax payments were also integrated with the state server. During the integration, multiple double entries were created. Due to this, there are around Rs 6 crore arrear amounts, with around 400 to 450 tax assessments, that have been pending to be deleted from the servers. We have written a letter to the government requesting approval for the deletion process. Once we receive the nod, the arrear figures will be adjusted and improved,” he added.