PUNE, Maharashtra: Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to auction over 200 properties of defaulters to recover taxes. With this, the ULB is looking to recover nearly ₹60 crore of its tax money. The administration has set a deadline of December 20 for tax defaulters to settle their debts to avoid property auction.
Vikram Kumar, PMC Administrator, said that an auction will be carried out if the defaulters fail to clear their dues before the given deadline. The auction will take place online.
Till now, the administration has sealed more than 1,300 properties due to non-payment of taxes. Remaining 1,100 properties will auctioned in a phased manner over the next few months.
Auction is the last resort for the civic body to recover its tax dues. Other methods of dealing with non-payment of taxes include serving notices and sealing the respective properties temporarily. If still the tax is not paid, ULB changes the ownership name to itself in 7/12 extracts. Later, the civic body auctions the property via an online bidding process.
However, activists are demanding that the administration take action against big defaulters. Vivek Velankar of Sajag Nagrik Manch, a citizens’ group, said, “The PMC should show consistency in its action which should be taken against the establishments that have large tax defaulters. There are amnesty schemes for defaulters, but even then, many property owners have not paid their dues. Stringent action against them is a must.”
PMC has set the target of collecting ₹2,318.15 crore as property tax in 2023-24. Apart from that, the civic body is expecting to raise ₹300 crore in the form of water taxes from the residential properties as a component of property tax. With this, the expected revenue the local body is looking to raise increases to ₹2,618.15 crore.
Property tax is one of the major sources of revenue for the urban local bodies, especially after the abolishment of octroi and local body tax.