CMC and ICTA facilitate taxes paid online

Sri Lanka's state-run ICT Agency (ICTA) will be aiding the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) to facilitate Colombo City tax payers to pay several categories of CMC taxes online, according to a statement issued this week by ICTA. This facility went live on January 8.

Further, the statement also noted; "For this the tax payers are required to provide the CMC account number and the relevant street name and assessment number. Among the tax categories for which this online payment could be made are the following: (1) Rates payments, (2) Trade tax, (3) Tax on businesses, (4) Market rental, (5) House rental, (6) Shops and boutiques rental and (7) Hawkers’ rental. The modus operandi is simple and includes logging in and entering the payment type www.cmc.lk".

Additionally, the statement also indicated; "ICTA shall ensure that all possible security concerns related to data sharing and connecting to internal systems are addressed in a comprehensive manner through assessments carried out by Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team... ICTA will extend Lanka Gate components such as the Country Portal, 1919GovSMS and the Lanka Interoperability Exchange (LIX) which is the data exchange Enterprise Service Bus to enable the CMC to offer eServices to CMC stakeholders efficiently and in a secure manner leveraging multiple delivery channels".

Also included in the statement, Colombo Mayor A J M Muzammil was quoted as having "stressed the importance of having the arrears (about Rs. 1,500 million) due to the CMC made available to the CMC soon. He expressed the hope that technology would facilitate this. He also stressed the need to have an online link that could make it more convenient for the CMC to receive the funds released by the Ministry".