Hyderabad: Telangana is perhaps one of the few states that did not allow the country Covid year (2020-21) to exploit his performance, whether in the agricultural sector, where he is ready for a record harvest through his strategic planning, overall economic growth or, for that matter, even lowering the unemployment rate compared to the national average in the light of the pandemic.
Given this background, it should come as no surprise that the state government improved its performance in property tax collection in 2020-’21, when it recorded 703.32 million in property tax collections from 141 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) at 561 .05 Rs. crore in 2019-20.
This excludes the Rs.155.26 collection collected under the One Time Settlement (OTS) scheme, and Rs.153.87 collections by building conditions.
Officials from the municipal administration department told Telangana Today that the total collection of property taxes could be several times higher by the time the financial closure takes place on March 31, as it is done by hand. The total collection details will be announced within a few days.
In the 141 ULBs, there are 2,027,591 assessments and officials were able to collect 87.52 percent. Among all the districts, Medchal-Malkajgiri topped the map with R191.35 crore in property tax collection, followed by Ranga Reddy district at R101.16 crore and Nizamabad district 68.19 Rs.
The Kumram Bheem district recorded the lowest collection Rs.1,5 million, followed at the bottom of the table by the Jayashankar Bhupalpally district at R4,44 crore and Jangaon district Rs.3,46 crore. Officials say the number of buildings assessed for tax collection was low compared to other districts.
A senior MAUD official pointed out that this was a remarkable achievement, as the pandemic caused great damage last year. “This is phenomenal, especially since businesses and markets were closed for almost four months from March to June,” the official pointed out.
The department has, as part of its strategy to improve collections, embarked on initiatives such as the launch of e-Pattana Sevalu, Chatbot, the implementation of tax havens and OTS scheme. Of all the initiatives, improving the e-Pattana Sevalu software application has helped taxpayers a lot and made it convenient for them, he said, adding that all 141 ULBs and all services have now been brought under one platform by a new software application called E -Pattana Soukaryam, an integrated web-based application platform that provides services by resolving all tax-related grievances that have helped increase tax collection
Another important initiative that helped was the Chatbot service. The service is a dedicated WhatsApp channel to facilitate tax payments for citizens across the state, and is free to use and will also serve as a source for the latest information. on tax money.
Citizens can send a ‘Hello’ to CDMA, Telangana’s official WhatsApp account on +91 90002 53342, to easily access these services and pay their taxes comfortably via debit card, credit card, internet banking services or UPI payments. The chatbot is currently available in English and Telugu. A total of 2.6 lakh hits are recorded in chatbot to date.
Tax havens have been offered in all ULBs to help property owners pay their taxes and address their grievances. Unlike in the past, local authorities are competent to address the grievances of taxpayers, including high tax components, wrong assessment and others. Earlier, all such problems had to be solved at CDMA and it took a lot of time except that the taxpayers had to delay the payments, the official explained.
One-off settlement scheme (OTS) has enabled the taxpayers to eliminate their accumulated arrears with 90 per cent waiver of the fine. This scheme was announced in the month of July 2020 with the condition of paying the total tax principal amount until the year 2019-20 together with ten percent interest on the total arrears at one time.
This scheme has been applied to all non-government properties in all the ULBs in the state. This time-bound scheme was implemented from 1 August 2020 to 15 September 2020. Later, the government extended the scheme until 31 March 2021.
Source: Telangana Today