Coimbatore Corporation campaigns to improve tax collection

The civic body cleans property tax list to remove duplicate entries

With two more months to go for the 2021-22 financial year end, the Coimbatore Corporation has started campaigning to improve property tax collection.

As on January 10, the Corporation has achieved 53% tax collection, collecting ₹ 108.79 crore of the current year’s demand of ₹ 206.02 crore. To improve tax collection, the Corporation has launched a campaign using vehicles fitted with public address system to urge tax payers to pay property tax, said the Corporation sources.

The Corporation has also prepared a list of top tax defaulters to be given to bill collectors to meet them to recover dues. The tax arrears amounted to ₹ 167.27 crore. Of the dues, ₹ 53.31 crore was under litigation, which the civic body was trying to resolve.

Meanwhile, the Corporation recently carried out an exercise to clean the property tax demand list. Resolutions the Corporation passed at the November 30, 2021 Council meeting showed that it had decided to remove over 8,000 entries in property tax in all the five zones as they were double entries or the buildings were demolished or non-existent or were not traceable.

The Corporation said its officials in the five zones conducted a door-to-door exercise to identify such assessments and came up with the list of over 8,000 assessments.

The money from the assessments amounted to ₹ 13.12 crore. It not only removed the assessments, but also reduced the total property tax demand by ₹ 13.12 to update the list, the sources said.