Vacant land tax arrears account for Rs 194 cr in VMC

Vijayawada: Vijayawada Municipal Corporation staff is unable to collect vacant land tax from the assesses and public institutions. Even though fund crunch problem is haunting the VMC, the officials concerned, mainly the revenue department seems to be not focusing on tax collections. Because of the officials' heedlessness, crores of rupees of the amount, which is used for various development works, are piling up year by year in the form of arrears. As per the information, the VMC is yet to collect Rs 194 crore vacant land tax dues from individuals and public institutions from 12,234 assessments. However, the VMC Commissioner and authorities have to collect this tax with all their might to generate revenue that will be helpful for the VMC.

Due to the negligence of both VMC officials and taxpayers, the vacant land tax demand shoots up drastically from year to year.

The actual demand reached Rs 206.63 crore for 2022-23, which was Rs 135 crore only in 2017. With interest and adding new vacant land taxes, the present vacant tax demand raised by above 50 per cent in six years.

As per the officials, the VMC authorities identified 15,353 vacant land assessments till date. Of which, so far 3,119 assessments were collected an amount of Rs 12.43 crore as tax. Leftover assessments' tax has to be collected, but it has been pending for years.

VMC is unable to collect taxes from them as so many assessments are not identified by the VMC officials properly. As the years pass by, the VMC revenue department says every time that they are unable to trace the landowners. The authorities also say every time that the defaulters list has so many Central and State government institutions and they didn't pay the tax for years even though the VMC officials negotiated with them so many times. Due to these types of reasons, the VMC is losing crores of rupees.

VMC Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) Venkata Lakshmi said that they will conduct special drives to collect vacant land tax. She also said that above Rs 100 crore VLT assessment details were not traced.