CHENNAI: The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has surpassed its property tax collection target for the financial year 2022-23. The civic body had set a target of Rs 1,500 crore and ended up collecting Rs 1,522.8 crore.
This is the highest-ever collection by the GCC, beating its previous record of Rs 979.9 crore in 2019, according to corporation data. This is due to the revision of the property tax that came into effect last year.
Among the 15 zones of the corporation, the highest collection of property and professional taxes came from Teynampet zone that closed at Rs 409.2 crore - Rs 303 crore in property tax and Rs 106.21 crore in professional tax. It was followed by Royapuram which collected Rs 200 crore in property tax.
Thiruvottiyur and Madhavaram collected the least at Rs 27.3 core and Rs 21.6 crore respectively, owing to the lesser number of property tax assessees in the two zones. This year, a total of 17.9 lakh property owners paid taxes. While the increase in property tax can be attributed as a natural outcome due to the revision that came into effect last year, the civic body has also closed the gaps in tax collection over the last few years.
This year, it looks to collect Rs 1,680 crore. While it proposed to achieve a part of it by reassessing under-assessed properties, tax collectors in the city said a better IT infrastructure will also help in boosting collections.
A tax collector on conditions of anonymity said, “We put up a special camp for property tax collection at a gated community last Sunday since the deadline (March 31) was approaching. We went there at 8 am but had to return empty-handed because the servers were down even after four hours. When we go back again, not everyone will be available to pay.”
Less than half of the payments are made through websites and mobile applications, and tax collectors are still doing a majority of the work, he added.