GMC begins campaign to mobilise tax collections

Guntur: The Guntur Municipal Corporation launched a campaign to collect advance collection of property tax for second half year for 2019-20 financial year. House owners who will pay advance property tax before April 30, will get 5 per cent of rebate on the tax. To create awareness among people, GMC Commissioner Srikesh B Lathkar released a poster at a programme held in the GMC on Saturday and requested house owners to avail the facility provided by the GMC and cooperate with the officials.

According to official sources, there are 1.67 lakh property assessments in Guntur city. Property tax demand is Rs 95 crore for private buildings including government buildings and the GMC will get Rs 157 crore property tax per annum. The GMC is targeted to collect Rs 20 crore property tax by April 30. So far it has collected Rs 5 crore.

The officials are unable to concentrate on advance tax collections due to general elections. After completion of elections, revenue teams mobilized Rs 4 crore advance tax. The officials are feeling that if they put more efforts, the advance tax collections will improve in the next 10 days. The officials are expecting that they will get another Rs 5 crore to Rs.7 crore in the coming 10 days.

The GMC also asked the house owners to pay advance tax through the debit and credit card and set up special counters for the convenience of tax payers. The officials campaigning through public address system in slums and telecast advertisements in local TV channels. The GMC officials are saying that if the house owners will pay with the debit card or credit through line system, they need not pay Rs.5 service charge.

To improve advance tax collections, the GMC is sending SMS alerts to houseowners. Meanwhile GMC Commissioner Srikesh B Lathkar is regularly reviewing the advanced property tax collections and directed the revenue officials to motivate the house owners to pay the advance tax to get 5 per cent discount. He fixed the targets to revenue officials and revenue inspectors and reviewing the progress of advance tax collections.