The Times of India                  14.03.2013

Local body tax will help raise revenue, says Pathak

As against the common belief, Pune's municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak believes that the implementation of the local body tax (LBT) will actually help the municipal corporation earn more.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Pathak said, "The process of levying the local body tax, as compared to octroi, is simple. Even the tax rates are lower. So we expect more and more traders to register with us which will eventually help us earn more revenue."

Pathak said the information from the sales tax department, PMC's property tax department and the water department has been compiled to create a data bank of traders. There are around 3.45 lakh traders who will come under the purview of the local body tax. The administration will start the process of registering the traders from March 14.

Octroi has always been a major source of income for the PMC with almost 40% of its revenue coming from this source. The local body tax will replace octroi from April 1. The PMC expects an income of Rs 1,300 crore from octroi till March 31, 2013.

Vilas Kanade, head of the octroi department, said that traders can register themselves at 16 centres across the city. Fifteen centres have been set up at 15 ward offices while one centre has been established at the octroi department office near the PMC headquarters in Shivajinagar. Online and offline registration facilities are available.

The details of registration have been uploaded on the PMC's official website www.punecorporation.org

"The traders can register themselves online or they can visit one of the 16 centres," Kanade said.

Traders are opposing the local body tax citing ambiguities at the municipal corporation level.

Pathak refuted the traders' charge. "The civic administration has interacted with the traders and clarified its position. Some of the issues raised by traders relate to state and union governments and those can not be sorted out at the PMC level," Pathak said.

What is local body tax

The state government has decided to replace octroi with the local body tax. The new tax structure will come into force from April 1. All traders who import good over Rs 5,000 will have to register themselves with the local self-government body.

The government has put all the products in different categories and rates of local body tax have been defined as per the category. The civic administration along with the state government will review the tax rates every year.