BMC notice to 284 holding tax violators

BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Wednesday issued notices to about 284 holding tax violators in the Capital City. The pending tax amounts to a whopping `9 crore, the civic body said.

The corporation has warned that action would be initiated against the violators if they fail to deposit the tax by March 31. Certificate cases are filed against defaulters under Odisha Public Demands Recovery (OPDR) Act. If a certificate case is filed against a person and she/he continues to ignore it, stringent action including attaching bank accounts and movable and immovable property could be initiated against the defaulter till the outstanding dues are cleared.

According to BMC, Apex Engineering College in Pahala has defaulted holding tax amounting to `2.52 crore. There are about 1 lakh holding tax payers in the Capital City.“Till the third quarter of the current financial year, BMC has collected holding tax amounting to `14.51 crore. In total, we have collected `35. 07 crore during the entire year,” BMC officer Srimanta Mishra informed. Most of the defaulters, he said, have been delaying payment of tax for more than two years. There are also those who have not paid for last several years. BMC has, meanwhile, taken assistance of Orissa Space Applications Centre (ORSAC ) to digitise the holdings across the Capital City and conduct a survey to list all the holding tax payers.
The civic body’s officials are of the opinion that once the satellite based application is introduced, it would help them to increase the holding tax collections.