Digital payments fail to garner expected response

Visakhapatnam: Digital payment initiated by the government to ease tax payments, save time, effort and boost transparency fails to garner desired response.

Even as the Central and state governments claim to consider transformative steps to promote digital payments on a par with offline transactions to enhance transparency and build trust, such digital transformation is yet to achieve expected results.

Despite inconveniences faced, many prefer visiting 'seva kendra' or 'saukaryam kendram' or 'pura seva kendram' to pay taxes even if it means waiting for hours in the queue line.

To ease the payment process, the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) has launched a bunch of apps to provide multiple services of the corporation and bring people closer to digital transactions. This includes tax payment as well.

However, a number of reasons appear to dissuade taxpayers from switching completely to the online payment mode. Time taken to get the amount credited to respective departments, transaction failure followed by technical glitches are some of the reasons taxpayers cite for their hesitancy in opting for online payment.

In addition, a majority of taxpayers rush to the centres to pay tax on the last date. "By making digital transactions at the nick of the moment, there is a higher scope for the amount getting debited from the bank immediately and payment being credited the next working day. This apparently leads to a late fee to that extent, while in some cases acknowledgment of the receipt may not pop up at all. Hence we prefer to pay house tax visiting the centre directly," says N Muralidhar, a resident of Visalakshinagar.

In order to achieve targets and ensure collection of pending taxes, the municipal administration department facilitated waiver of interest on arrears of property tax. Despite that, the authorities concerned express concern over achieving the set targets.

When asked why the people fail to show interest in making online payment, zonal commissioner of Zone-8 M Mallayya Naidu, says, "There are over 6 lakh assessments in Visakhapatnam. Given the volume, there is a possibility for the apps becoming slow due to overload while making digital transactions. Also, technical glitch is another reason why not many go for digital payments."

Further, the zonal commissioner opines that the waiver of interest on pending tax arrears is an opportunity for the people to clear their dues.

Even as people experience setbacks such as not receiving change from the counter post the bill payment, long waiting hours in the queues and server failures, they still prefer across the counter payment over digital mode.

Although digital payments have been promoted extensively to enhance transparency, not many utilise the platform for different reasons.