Observing that the recovery of advertisement tax by the assistant revenue officers (AROs) is very slow, the Karnataka High Court on Wednesday told the eight joint commissioners of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to closely monitor the process and directed them to file an affidavit by October 25 elaborating on the efforts made by them in this regard.
Justice Vineet Kothari issued the direction while hearing petitions filed by various advertisement agencies questioning various issues related to assessment of advertisement tax, levy of interest, penalty, etc.
The efforts by the Joint Commissioners should result in significant improvement in recovery of tax, failing which the court would be constrained to fix the responsibility upon them as well, besides the AROs.
The court also directed the BBMP to produce a chart of two types of advertisement agencies — those who are before the court as petitioners and those who are not — and the position of their tax assessments and collections made from them respectively.
