Taxed and tired

CHENNAI: End of fiscal year 2023-2024 is less than 10 days away, and it is high-tension time for both tax collectors and payers.

Thanks to the December-floods due to Cyclone Michaung, which damaged homes, shops and businesses of thousands of residents in the city, property owners, vendors, and traders have spent the last 3 months trying to repair the damages and replace what was lost. This has impacted their financial capacity to pay property taxes by end of March 2024.

Revenue officers of the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), who have fixed targets in collecting taxes, are finding it difficult to collect it from the taxpayers. So far, the civic body has collected Rs 1,970 crore, which is inclusive of property, professional and entertainment taxes.

It’s one of the crucial periods especially after announcing the election date and implementation of the Model Code of Conduct in the city. Though officials, especially of the revenue department, are occupied with poll duty, they have clarified that their primary work is to collect taxes from individuals and organisations before the financial year ends to avoid penalty.

But it has become difficult for the officials to collect tax money from the individuals especially. “Owners are not ready to pay tax and keep dragging, which puts us under a lot of pressure to collect, as we too operate within a strict deadline. For the last three months, we’ve been sending multiple notices and notifications to homeowners to pay property and professional taxes for the current financial year, and yet many traders and individuals have not paid,” said a senior zonal officer.

The Corporation has issued notice to the defaulters and notification through SMS and WhatsApp. Officers stated that most of the taxpayers would pay the amount only during the last week of March. Despite the ongoing election work, the GCC’s revenue department will be setting up special camps to collect tax money from the people in the coming days.

“As of now, we’ve collected Rs 407 crore of professional tax whereas the target is Rs 500 crore for the present financial year. Immediately, after the flood, very few residents paid professional tax. It was a herculean task to collect the amount due from the companies. But now that the financial year is drawing to a close, they have started paying the tax,” said another official.

To ensure the companies pay professional tax during the financial year, the Corporation collects a list of registered companies under its limit and finds out the due amount to be paid. “The unpaid tax amount would be collected with penalty. This would be followed by the Revenue department from the upcoming fiscal year,” added the official.

The revised tax estimate for financial year 2023-2024 is fixed at Rs 1,680 crore. In the upcoming year, it’s expected to be Rs1,750 crore. Professional tax too would be revised from Rs 500 crore for this financial year to Rs 550 crore for 2024-25.

The tax amount paid to the Corporation has increased compared to the previous year. During the last fiscal year (April 2022 to March 2023), Rs 1,405 crore property tax was paid whereas this year, as on March 21, property owners have paid Rs 1,458 crore tax. The overall difference is Rs 53 crore. The professional tax payment for the last financial year was Rs 400 crore, which increased to Rs 407 crore for this financial year.

Expenditure for individual property owners spiked after Cyclone Michaung hit the city in December 2023. Denizens lamented over financial crunch and not having enough to pay taxes.

“Though the government is aware of the situation, they’re still forcing us to pay tax to achieve their fixed target,” said V Chandrasekaran, a resident of Tiruvottiyur, which was inundated during the recent flood. “We spent over Rs 1 lakh to repair the damages to the property. The zonal level officials sent reminders and notices to pay tax and with the spike in tax, we’re unable to pay it. We’ve not been given an extension to pay the tax.”