The Hindu          26.12.2014   

Now you can pay GHMC taxes in banks

To make the process of different tax and licence fee payments easier for citizens, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has tied-up with different banks in the city.

So far, the civic body has been accepting property tax, advertisement tax, trade licence, building permission fee and other payments only at e-Seva and Citizen Service Centres.

Since these centres are limited in numbers in the city, those having to pay the taxes and fee had to travel and queue up for their turn.

Seeking to ease the payment mode easier, the civic body has decided to tie-up with different banks and facilitate receipt of taxes and license fee at 555 different branches of these banks. These agreements were reached with senior representatives of banks at a special meeting convened by the GHMC recently.

Also, for payments made at e-Seva and Citizen Service Centres, the GHMC had to pay a service charge which would not be required with the new mode of bank payments thus saving around Rs.50 lakh to the civic body.

Network banks

“Citizens henceforth can visit nearest branch of these networked banks and make the payment instead of having to travel to Citizen Service Centres and so on,” said GHMC Commissioner and Special Officer Somesh Kumar.

The banks that have tied-up with the civic body to accept the taxes and fee include 200 branches of the State Bank of Hyderabad, 200 branches of Andhra Bank, 74 branches of ICICI, 45 branches of Indian Bank, 15 branches of Indus Hind, 11 branches of Yes Bank and 10 branches of Kotak.

Few more banks have also evinced interest in joining the network, according to Mr. Somesh Kumar.

The banks have also agreed to set up separate counters for receiving the taxes at their branches and appropriate boards to this effect would be displayed there, he said.

The payments could be made in cash or through, credit card or debit card.