JMC Rolls Back One-Time Urban Development Tax

Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) has rolled back the order that allowed residents to pay urban development tax at one go In February 2018, the state government came up with a new order that a person could pay urban development tax at one go for eight years. This, however, was considered to be a big loss for JMC as people started misusing it. Deputy Commissioner of revenue Naveen Bhardhwaj said, “People started altering their properties after paying tax for eight years. This was against our interests as people were avoiding paying taxes leading to revenue losses. Hence, we asked the authorities to roll back the order.” “If everyone started paying one-time urban development tax, than after few years the corporation will not be earning any revenue. We need revenue generation every year,” said Bhardhwaj People who made alterations in their properties after paying the advance tax will be charged again accordingly as the order is now been rolled back. Any property that is still in the same form as it was when the advance tax was paid, will not be charged anything till the 8-year term expires. This order was issued because the collection of urban development tax was really poor in the JMC. The government wanted to motivate people to pay more tax even that included one-time payment. JMC was able to collect more than Rs 73 crore of urban development tax this year. After a gap of 15 years, the civic body will start its property survey to identify properties taxable for urban development tax. Municipal Corporation Jaipur, Heritage and Greater has given the contract to a firm. Taxable property survey was last conducted in 2005 and since then the population of the city has almost doubled. At present there are 1,32,000 properties taxable that were identified in the 2005 survey. Lack of updated survey of taxable properties has been a major economic blow to the revenue of the municipal corporation