In the financial year (2021-2022) that ended a few days ago, the Coimbatore Corporation had collected ₹213.96 crore in property tax.
The money collected included ₹40.48 crore that was due as arrears. Deducting the sum, the Corporation had collected ₹173.48 crore, which was 84.08% of the total demand for the year, said sources in the Coimbatore Corporation.
The civic body’s collection of property tax for 2020-21, excluding arrears, was ₹162.87 crore, which was 86% of that year’s demand of ₹189.19 crore.
In 2021-22 the Corporation, under Commissioner Raja Gopal Sunkara, had taken quite a few initiatives to clean property tax data in its books and improve collection. Based on ground report from bill collectors, the Corporation identified buildings that did not exist but whose records were ‘alive’ in the Corporation records to delete those entries.
The Corporation then identified double entries – two assessments for a building and several such anomalies to clean the property tax data. The exercise resulted in the civic body removing around 8,000 entries with over ₹13 crore demand.
The Corporation partnered with Bengaluru-based NGO Janaagraha to conduct a municipal premier league – a competition for bill collectors to reward the best performers. Mr. Sunkara had told The Hindu that it was to motivate the bill collectors.
The Corporation also said that notwithstanding the time the officials hand to spend in conducting the Assembly election in April-May 2021 and Urban Local Body Election 2022 in January-February, it collected around 84% of the last financial year’s tax.
To incentivise assessees to pay tax on time, the Corporation, in this year’s budget, had proposed steps to improve amenities in tax collection centres. This, they hope, would reflect in tax collection at the end of the current financial year, the officials added.
