Property tax collection a big challenge for civic authorities

Adilabad: Property tax is a major income source for the development of the municipalities, but the tax collection has become a big challenge for the municipal authorities. As the State government had issued orders to collect all the pending dues by March month end, the officials have prepared a list of pending bills and prepared for collecting the dues.

The newly elected Municipal Chairmen were given targets for collecting the dues. According to the new municipal law, the government has to pay Rs 143 crores every month for the development of the municipality.

Dry, wet garbage and sanitation management, purchasing of tractors for the transportation of garbage, payments of sanitary workers, municipal employees and development, infrastructure in backward areas are the big problems before the municipalities. To settle all these problems, the civic authorities have to depend on the property tax only.

In the joint Adilabd district, the officials have to collect property tax dues worth about Rs 25 crores in the seven municipalities. March month is about to begin and the authorities haven't reached even 50% of their target.

The government has been planning to take up special property collection drive and to issue Red Notice door-to-door. It should be noted here that the Municipal Commissioners are responsible for setting up special teams in the wards. Last year Adilabad municipality has reached targets and collected record level collation i.e., 96.65 per cent. But this year the property tax collections haven't reached the expected level and the officials are specially focused on it.

The government had assigned Additional Collectors in the districts to focus on reaching the targets. There are no problems in collecting property tax from residential and commercial complexes but collections are not coming from government offices. Last year the officials have managed to collect taxes to a large extent, but this year they failed to collect even 24 per cent of tax from government offices.

In Grade-1 Adilabad municipality, there are 37,540 commercial and residential complexes and the officials have collected Rs 3.64 crores out of the Rs 6.31 crores of pending property tax so far. As March moth is approaching, the target collection of Rs 2.7 crores has become a big challenge for the authorities.