Hyderabad: Property tax payers who pay the capital amount and ignore the penalty on late payment, need not think they are in the clear. The GHMC authorities across all divisions have issued fresh notices to those who have not cleared the penalty, accumulated due to delay and missing deadlines. The penalty imposed is 2 per cent. So for a property tax amounting to '2 lakh, if one has not paid before December 31, 2016, for the last quarter, a penalty of Rs 4,000 will be added to the tax. Unlike in previous years, the state government has not so far given any direction to the GHMC to waive the tax penalty.
In each of the divisions, the GHMC will earn close to Rs 30-50 crore in penalty alone. GHMC Commissi-oner Dr B. Janardhan Reddy explained that a penalty of two per cent is levied under the Municipal Act for non-payment of the tax before the deadline. “For the first half or semester of the financial year, 31st August is the deadline, and for the second half it is 31st December. If a payer fails to clear the fine amount, the system will automatically add it to the tax bill of the next financial year. The GHMC advises owners not to ignore the penalty amount and make payment by March 31.”
The major penalty defaulters are corporate hospitals, star hotels, multiplexes and shopping malls. Taxpayers were expecting the government to waive the fine amount after the MLC election code, but there is no say on it as yet. The penalty was last waived in February 2016 for a sum amounting to '532.57 crore in the GHMC limits, which benefited 6,24,709 taxpayers.
