Civic body’s tax collection likely to cross Rs 1,150 crore for first time

Surat: Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC), which has so far collected over Rs852 crore from assessees, hopes to create a record in tax collection this financial year. This year, tax demand raised is about Rs12 38 crore and the civic body is aiming at collecting more than Rs1,150 crore, which if achieved, will be a record.
In the financial year 2017-18, SMC managed to collect Rs851.47 crore in taxes from people as against the demand for Rs1019 crore.

“We have already gone past last year’s tax collection. The major reason for this is 20 per cent hike proposed in user charges. Recovery of 68.87 per cent of taxes on December 31, 2018 augurs well for the civic body. We expect to collect over Rs1,100 crore in taxes this year. If SMC manages to cross Rs1,000-crore figure, it will be a record,” an officer of SMC’s finance department said.

He said SMC budget for 2019-20 is likely to be around Rs5,500 crore. SMC gets Rs60 crore on monthly basis to compensate for octroi loss.

“When we raised user charges to earn additional revenue of Rs500 crore, the plan was to have income of Rs2,000 crore and more. However, we are still short of clear income of Rs2,000 crore,” the officer said.