KMC lists four commercial properties over tax evasion of about Rs 10 crore
KOLKATA: Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has identified four commercial properties in the city which have been attached and will be soon put to auction for nonpayment of property tax — amounting to about Rs 10 crore — ignoring several notices slapped by the civic body.
A senior official of the civic body said that the auctioning process of the four properties is expected to kick off from this month itself.
All the properties are located in Central and North Kolkata and one of them is a hotel located at Sarojini Naidu Sarani on Rawdon Street while another is a commercial property located at BBD BAG in central Kolkata. The property tax arrear of the Rawdon Street Hotel is around Rs 3 crore 44 lakh.
Municipal Commissioner Binod Kumar recently chaired a meeting with concerned officials of the Assessment department at the ward level and asked them to go door-to-door if needed to mop up property tax due. The officials have been asked to take adequate measures to attach more such properties that have been evading tax so that they can be put into auction. In the month of June, Kumar had directed officers in the rank of Assessor and Chief Manager to be more active for realisation of outstanding tax.
As per directions, in cases where property tax over Rs 1 crore is due, the Chief Man
ager was asked to regularly follow up while if the due amount is between Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore it should be personally handled by the Assessor Collector and so on.KMC has had a property tax collection of nearly Rs 470 crore by the end
of July which is Rs 100 crore more than the corresponding year during this period.
It is learnt that there are 8 lakh 27 thousand property taxpayers in Kolkata. Out of which 7 lakh 22 thousand are residential taxpayers.