Hyderabad: GHMC to go digital for paying property tax

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has taken a key decision to further streamline the property tax payment process. The IT (Information Technology) Department of the GHMC is soon going to provide the facility of paying tax with UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payment, QR code, PhonePay, Paytm and other mobile wallets.

Apart from paying tax through the GHMC website, citizens can also pay through the MyGHMC mobile application and also at citizens service centres. According to the GHMC officials, the tax deduction facility with the UPI account number, debit and credit cards will be made available to the public by embedding the PTI number on the GHMC website. It will be linked to the MyGHMC application.

If the tax amount is paid through cash or cheque to the collectors or tax inspectors, they will enter the details on spot using the android tablet and will also provide a receipt. As part of the digitalisation of tax payments, when the QR code is scanned by the house owner the tax amount to be paid will be displayed on the mobile phone. Citizens can also enter the house number and know the tax amount. The municipal corporation will open and activate the municipal 'Property Tax' digital payments in a month. People will be able to pay the property tax by using their mobile.

The corporation is aiming to increase and promote digital payment options in the civic body. They said that recently several banks have merged with other banks and also some areas are paying tax with cheques belonging to old banks. The authorities directed the field staff to be careful about cheque payments as most of these cheques are not valid. The corporation's annual tax collection is Rs 1,850 crore. During the current financial year Rs 1,212 core has been collected.