BHUBANESWAR:
Transgender persons have resumed the collection of holding tax on behalf of the
Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (
BMC).
The community, which has been deployed by the BMC to make defaulters cough up their tax dues, has been given the target of collecting Rs 43 crore by the end of the ongoing financial year. Within eight days of the resumption of
tax collection, the group has collected Rs 50 lakh.
“There are people who are seeking sympathy in the name of
Covid. But they must understand that these are old dues, which they should have paid on time. We are tough with them,” said leader of the group, Meghna Sahoo.
Big holding tax defaulters comprise mainly business establishments, commercial complexes, factories, industries, malls, automobile repair and cleaning units and other private facilities. Holding tax is collected on the basis of the built-up area of an establishment, be it commercial or residential.
The squad said their work was not easy but they were ready to face all challenges. “The defaulters can’t make any excuses now as the civic body has been very lenient with them. We know how to extract the money from them,” Meghna added.
The group had started the work on February 11, 2020. Till March 20, 2020, they had collected Rs 2 crore out of the target of Rs 11 crore given to them then.
The transgender persons have been given a fresh list of defaulters for this fiscal, as some of the defaulters had deposited the dues online. The five-member squad operates centrally and moves around in a BMC vehicle.
The civic body has set a target of earning Rs 60 crore from holding tax by the end of the current fiscal. “We now have 98,000 holdings in the city. We are expecting that by March-end, we will be able to include 40,000 more holdings, which are outside the ambit of tax administration,” said BMC deputy commissioner Srimanta Mishra.