The Times of India             14.08.2013

AMC seals 50 commercial properties, recovers Rs 30L in a day

AURANGABAD: Acting tough against the commercial property owners, the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on Tuesday sealed 50 properties in the city on account of delay in tax payments. Under the new system, the civic body has made it mandatory for all commercial property owners to fulfil their current tax liability in the first quarter of the financial year.

Till last financial year, the tax payers used to turn up at the end of the fiscal.

Tax collection in charge in the AMC, Shivaji Zanzan, on Tuesday said it was for the first time in the current fiscal that the AMC had sealed such a huge number of properties.

Municipal commissioner Harshdeep Kamble had some time back said that the AMC would implement effective tax collection drives for achieving higher percentage of tax from residential property owners.

"Such aggressive action against the tax payers was only witnessed during the financial year ending. But as the municipal body has decided to carry out tax collection drive aggressively right from the first quarter, we are sealing properties simultaneously in all the six municipal wards," he said. Zanzan said that all the six ward officers were directed to take tough action against those delaying payments.

Zanzan said that all the 20,000 commercial property owners were served notices in March asking them to pay the taxes to avoid sealing. "In the current financial year, the civic body has recovered Rs 20 crore on account of commercial property tax while the total outstanding due is Rs 48 crore," he said.

He said the AMC officials recovered about Rs 30 lakh on Tuesday during the tax collection drive. Calling it a big success, Zanzan said many property owners were paying tax on the spot to avoid sealing action. The total target of property tax in 2013-14 is Rs 100 crore (including commercial and residential properties).

There are a total of 1.75 lakh property owners in the city limits. But the residential property owners are not on the radar of the civic administration. A senior officer in the tax collection department in the municipal corporation on the condition of anonymity, said that demand notices to the residential tax payers were not yet issued. "As of now we are focusing on commercial properties," he said.