The Hindu 09.09.2009
Local bodies to act tough on defaulting cable TV operators
Serena Josephine M and Preeti Narayan
Photo : T. Singaravelou
The Puducherry and Oulgaret municipalities have come up with stringent measures to curb non-payment of tax dues from cable operators. —
PUDUCHERRY: The Puducherry and Oulgaret municipalities will come down hard on defaulting cable television operators in the respective limits. While the Puducherry municipality has set a deadline for payment of tax dues, the Oulgaret municipality has decided to cut cable connections without prior intimation.
There are 66 cable operators in 42 wards of Puducherry municipality. The operators claimed that they had a subscriber base of 9,467 up to 2006 in the municipality limits - a claim now proved wrong, said senior officials of the municipality.
“The re-survey of the cable operators’ subscriber base in 15 wards conducted from July 2009 found that there were 16,300 households with cable television connections. We will be covering the remaining wards in 15 days,” Commissioner of Puducherry Municipality S. Kuppusamy said. As per returns furnished by cable operators in Oulgaret municipality, there are 68 cable TV operators providing 8,600 connections. But officials said that the number of connections are lot more.
According to a property tax survey conducted by the local body in 2005, over 40,000 houses were assessed. The officials said considering that all these houses have cable connections, and a modest estimation of cable TV subscription fee being Rs. 100, the municipality should is due get Rs. 4 lakh a month as entertainment tax. This translates to a loss of around Rs. 48 lakh a year.
Taking serious note of continuous defaults, the municipalities have decided to crackdown on the cable operators to collect tax arrears. In Puducherry municipality, from June 1, 2002 to December 31, 2006, cable operators had to pay a total tax of Rs. 58.46 lakh. So far, Rs. 41.37 lakh has been collected. On the other hand, Rs. 59.65 lakh stands as tax arrears in Oulgaret municipality, with only Rs. 31.43 lakh having been collected so far from June 2000 to March 2009.
