Pune: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has rejected the plea of Shiv Sena corporator Pramod Bhangire to start an amnesty scheme for property tax. According to the civic administration, amnesty scheme is an injustice for regular tax payers.
Bhangire had tabled a proposal in the Standing Committee recently. Committee members took the decision to take the opinion of Property Tax department before passing a proposal.
The Property Tax department submitted its opinion in the Standing Committee. It said it is not practical at this stage when the PMC is facing a revenue problem.
Bhangire said, “There are many middle class families and poor people who have arrears. They cannot pay tax as the amount is huge. The Property Tax department is charging 2 per cent of penalty every day on arrears. Therefore, the amount is high. If the PMC announces amnesty scheme, it will get revenue. At present, people are not paying because arrear amount is big.”
Vilas Kanade, Head of Property Tax Department of PMC, said, “We rejected the demand of the corporator as it will be injustice to regular taxpayers. We had already declared an amnesty scheme in 2016 but, we did not get sufficient response. Amnesty should be declared once in a while and not every year. Otherwise, people will become lazy and will not pay property tax on time. We are already facing a revenue crunch. Property tax is the only one main source of income for the civic body.”
There are around eight lakh property tax payers in PMC limits. There are 6 lakh residential properties and 1.40 lakh commercial and other are mixed in use (commercial and residential).
