Chandigarh civic body works overtime to send out revised property tax bills

                Chandigarh: MC Chandigarh has finally managed to send out revised property tax bills to taxpayers in the UT. It had initially published and sent bills calculated on the basis 
of the 
property tax rates approved earlier. These rates were later revised, following a notification from the UT administration. It is then that the bills sent earlier were withdrawn.In 
the ongoing 
fiscal so far, the civic body has already received a whopping Rs 21 crore in property taxes. With the two-month rebate period set to end on May 31, MC has appealed to 
taxpayers to 
come in huge numbers to pay their taxes and avail themselves of the rebate on both residential and commercial properties.Sources said sending the revised bills with 
decreased amounts 
within the stipulated time period was a challenge for the authorities, but the MC staff pulled out all stops to meet the target. tnnNot only this, MC's property branch staff is 
also attending to 
the queries of the taxpayers and resolving them on priority. Many of them have doubts and confusion about the measurement of the area and ambiguity in the tax amount, 
all of which are 
being cleared, the sources said.Taxpayers will get a 20% rebate on residential properties and 10% on commercial ones if they deposit their property tax within the given 
rebate period of 
two months, from 1 April to 31 May. Taxpayers who do not pay their tax within this two-month rebate period will have to pay a 25% penalty on the entire amount of their 
calculated 
property tax, and they will also have to pay 12% interest on the same to the authority.
With this revision in property tax for both residential and commercial segments, the Municipal Corporation, Chandigarh, expects to earn approximately rupees 70 crore in 
annual revenue 
from property tax, instead of the earlier expected collection of around rupees 90 crore annually. As per records, there are around 1.42 lakh properties in Chandigarh for the 
current 
financial year. Out of these, around 1.12 lakh are residential properties, and the remaining 30,000 are commercial properties. 


Source : Times of India