Lockdown Impact: PMC Extends Property Tax Rebate by June-End
The Pune civic body, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has announced a one-month extension for availing rebate on property Cess by 5 -10 % given the prevailing pandemic situation. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the civic authority or municipal corporations across the country are witnessing a credit crunch to serve in a qualitative manner. The ongoing pandemic has impacted the sales curve of businesses as well as administrations. Although despite the pandemic-driven lockdown, PMC has managed to collect ₹736 crores in its chest from Property Tax in the first two months of Q1 of this financial year 2021. While the collection was ₹1,500 crores last year same time period.
The sore in revenue via the property tax collection was also seen due to imposing relaxation with an additional 5% concession on the property Cess apart from the extension in the time period. As the second wave of COVID-19 commenced, a state-driven lockdown was initiated in March 2021 just before the opening of the current financial year. With all employment aspects and business outlets at a standstill state, for days it was a dubious state to strategically pit it forward about whether the realty-driven property tax collection would witness a hike this year or not. However, as a sigh of relief to PMC, the Pune residents had shown a positive sign as the tax collected summed to a total of a record ₹736 crores in the first two months only. Also, ₹526 crores were paid in taxes in the last month of May alone, the highest ever as compared to the last year.
As per PMC, these surprising figures on tax collection are witnessed primarily because the 1.92 lakh realty owners who registered in the government-centric Abhay Yojana scheme last year and have also paid up their taxes on time this year as well. The civic administration has also brought in a substantial number of new properties under their record that fall under the category of eligible tax generators realty.
