A recent survey conducted by the Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC) has found that as many as 1.05 lakh city residents in Agra city have not paid their house tax for five years. Officials said that going by the average house tax paid by an individual, the overall unpaid amount could be close to Rs 60 crore.
The municipal body had last conducted such a survey five years back (2012) and had then identified 1.80 lakh defaulters. Out of these, 75,000 property owners later began paying their taxes and a large amount of it was collected after demonetisation last year, after AMC announced to accept payments in Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. Officials said that in the past five years, the civic body has made several attempts to recover unpaid taxes from people and soon, a ward-wise lit of defaulters will be put together for this purpose.
Municipal commissioner Arun Prakash said, “Thousands of people having properties in different parts of the city are not paying their house tax. Such cases have now been identified and a ward-wise list is being prepared. The data will be forwarded to the National Informatics Centre (NIC). From there, a system-generated message will be sent to the mobile numbers of these defaulters informing them about their outstanding dues and the date by which house tax is required to be deposited.”
Prakash added, “We are also in the process of making provision for exemption of some outstanding dues. However, those who refuse to pay up even after this will have to face legal consequences.”
