The inclusion of 17 local bodies has brought tidings, literally, for Madurai Corporation. For, the cash-strapped Corporation has now got around Rs.10 crore general funds from those local bodies.
The funds could not have come at a better time for the Corporation.
“This month's tax collection is very poor. Mainly, because of the local body election and also because of holidays,” Commissioner, S. Natarajan, said.
The average daily collection of various taxes and water charges, rent for commercial complexes works around Rs. 30 lakh (around Rs. 9 crore a month). “However, this month we were able to collect only Rs. 1.5 crore,” he added.
Madurai Corporation has 3,078 officials and employees on its roll. Besides their salary, it has to take care of paying pension to hundreds of retired employees and their families.
“This alone works around Rs. 7.5 crore,” Mr. Natarajan said. The Rs. 10 crore, now at its disposal, will take care of the shortfall.
Mr. Natarajan said that there were efforts to augment revenue collection.
“We are undertaking a survey of trades functioning in the city that require Dangerous and Objectionable Trade Licenses. We hope the number of such establishments operating without the licences was too many,” he said.
Another area of increasing tax collection is bringing all buildings under property tax assessment.
“Our rough estimate is that some 40 per cent of the buildings is not assessed. This will bring us huge revenue,” he said.
Besides, hundreds of buildings are expected to be under-assessed.
“Many commercial buildings in residential areas continued to be taxed for residential building. Such buildings will be indentified, re-classified and taxed accordingly,” he added.
Stating that there were a number of complaints with regard to “wrong” classification of areas as A, B, C and D for property tax assessment, he said, “We propose to undertake reclassification of the areas. These things will set right the anomalies,” he added. Mr. Natarajan said that the property tax assesses would have to make self-assessment of their properties. “Any deviation on the assessment found by the Corporation officials will attract huge penalty,” he said.
