Municipal corporation to organize sector-wise meets to address tax woes in Chandigarh

CHANDIGARH: In a first of its kind move, the tax branch of the municipal corporation (MC) is going kick-off sector-wise meetings from next week to allow residents to settle their tax related issues.
This will benefit nearly 1.10 lakh property taxpayers of the city.
According to sources, the MC decided to dedicate 30 to 40 days to address the various queries received by them in the last few months. This, it hopes, will help remove all tax anomalies by settling the individual cases.
According to the plan, every sector will be given a time-frame so that the residents can come to the MC office and sort their problems out on the spot. The tax branch will also coordinate with municipal councillors and RWAs, so that the residents are made aware of this facility and are encouraged to make use of it to their advantage.
Anil Garg, additional municipal commissioner, who heads the MC's tax branch said, "We are going to start this exercise from the coming week and will cover all 63 sectors of the city. We will start from Sector 63 first and then one by one, we will cover all the sectors. During this exercise, those who have queries related to property tax, issues related to payment of tax, areas falling in the tax ambit, advance payment and just about anything related to the property tax, can get them addressed to their satisfaction. We have also uploaded online data of nearly 64,000 tax payers, both residential and commercial. The rest will also be covered very soon."
The MC has been taking a slew of measures to make paying taxes easier and thus increase its revenue. For instance, In April, the tax branch of the MC had sent property tax bills to over 5,000 residents in 12 sectors through the post office on the lines of water and power bills for the first time. Earlier, the process was under self-assessment scheme -- people had to file the tax on their own without any intimation. The department merely advertised in the newspapers, reminding people of their duty.