New plan from the Chennai Corporation to increase its revenue now - Guess how?
Posted on: 10/Oct/2022 9:25:29 AM
The Chennai Corporation has been trying many ways to increase its own revenue now!!
Recently, it had revised the property tax amount and now it has turned its focus on professional tax collections. It is now said that by following the guidelines of the World Bank, Chennai Corporation has begun exploring various ways to increase its revenue. It was revealed by some officials belonging to the Chennai Corporation that the overdraft of GCC has crossed Rs 500 crores and just 7lakhs property tax assessees have been categorised with zero balance in the property tax payment by the end of half year period between April 2022 and September 2022.
There is now a lack of staff in the revenue Department and due to this GCC is not able to take any initiative to increase its own revenue. In the first half of the financial year 2022-23, the property tax collection has been put at Rs 697 crores. The civic body has passed a resolution in the last council meeting about bringing in private teams to reassess 27lakh buildings to increase property tax revenue.
According to a senior officer, after taking steps to improve the property tax revenue GCC has now got plans to increase professional tax revenue. He confirmed that the professional tax rates would not be increased. He threw light on how the civic body would be matching professional tax databases with the company registration database, GST registrations etc. The objective behind this would be to bring more assessees in the tax net. It is leant that the revenue from the property tax would match the revenue from professional tax.
The database of the companies must be updated because after Covid-19 pandemic many old establishments were closed and new ones have started their operations. Once all the employees in Chennai are covered in the professional tax net, the professional tax would be equal to the property tax. This was according to some assistant revenue officers. Now, as manya s 1.51lakh professional tax assessees have been identified from the 15 GCC zones.
Amount collected from parking and advertisement would be the other two ways to increase the revenue of the Chennai Corporation. From Rs 80000, the daily average collections from parking has increased to Rs 1.2lakhs now.
It was stated by a senior officer from Revenue Department that new rules are being framed now and once the rules are notified for licensing hoardings and advertisements etc then Chennai Corporation would get more revenue.
