Thirty thousand of the 35,000 professional tax assessments show zero demand, the Coimbatore Corporation has found out during a special checking of accounts it had conducted recently.
The Corporation collects professional tax from commercial establishments and individuals through employers twice a financial year and the in the last budget (2021-22) it had estimated the demand at ₹ 32.77 crore.
Sources familiar with the issue said the Corporation with help from the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy had studied various revenue streams – property tax, water charges, building plan approval fee, professional tax among others.
While studying the professional tax entries, it found that though there were 35,000 assessments, only 30,000 entries had zero demand. Or, the entries showed no amount to be collected from those assessments.
This shocked the Corporation which was looking at moping up its revenue collection to tide over the financial crisis.
After identifying that 30,000 entries had zero demand, the Corporation set about finding the reason - whether it was due to an error in migrating the data from its accounting system to the one followed by the Commissionerate of Municipal Administration or the entries itself were erroneous.
To find out the truth the Corporation had tasked its bill collectors with checking on 50 professional tax assessments every day for the next few days, the sources said.
The bill collectors would go to the address against each of the selected 50 assessments for the the day and report the same to the commissioner.
At the end of the exercise the Corporation would be able to identify if the error was due to data migration or the 30,000 assessments were erroneous.
The Corporation charged ₹ 171 every half year from persons earning between ₹ 21,001 and ₹30,000 in six months, ₹426 from persons earning between ₹30,001 and ₹45,000 in six months, ₹ 856 from persons earning between ₹45,001 and ₹60,000 in six months, ₹1,250 from persons earning between ₹60,001 and ₹75,000 in six months and ₹1,250 from persons earning over ₹75,000.
For commercial establishments it charged a flat sum of ₹1,250 every six months, said the Corporation sources.
