N Delhi councillors reject new taxes

NEW DELHI: The highest decision making body of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation on Wednesday decided to scrap the proposal to introduce new taxes in the civic body’s budget for the financial year 2018-19.

The North MCD commissioner Madhup Vyas had last month proposed to introduce betterment and professional taxes .

Tilak Raj Kataria, chairman of the standing committee, turned down the proposal to levy new taxes Kataria also did not approve the commissioner’s proposal to introduce 15%, uniform property tax rate for all residen- tial properties. The standing committee also rejected the provision to have a fixed 20% tax on commercial, including industrial properties.

The decision of the committee will be presented before the House meeting for the final approval.

“We don’t want to put extra burden on residents. The Residents will continue to pay the property tax according to old rates which varies from 7%-11 %( of property’s current value), depending upon the category. The decision will give relaxation to eight lakh properties registered with the North corporation,” said Kataria.

The property’s current value is calculated on the basis of six components — age, area, use, occupancy, structure and base unit area value (BUAV) .

Every year, the executive wing brings proposal to levy new taxes and rationalise property tax rate. However, they are not accepted by the MCD’S political wings.

To promote the women entrepreneurs, the civic agency has proposed to grant 2% rebate in property tax and license fees under the ‘Start Up India’ scheme of the Centre government.

To increase its revenue, the civic agency has decided to charge night parking fee from buses,which are parked on the civic body’s land.

“It has been observed that the tourist buses are mostly parked on road or vacant pieces of land at night especially on the city outskirts. The vacant land belonging to municipal corporation is being occupied by the private buses. We will identify them and collect night parking charges,” said Kataria.

The civic body also plans to charge parking fees from banquet halls which use public land or roads for parking. “We are yet to decide the rates. However, it will vary on the basis of capacity and annual bookings of the banquet halls,” said Kataria.

Kataria also proposed to provide cashless medical insurance to the sanitation workers from next financial year.