CHENNAI: Poll duty of staff to hit Corporation revenue collection

By G Saravanan

Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai, on March 16, 2011:

Link:http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/poll-duty-of-staff-to-hit-corporation-revenue/256857.html

CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation is most likely to miss its property tax collection target of Rs 360 crores for 2010-11 as its revenue department staff, who used to work extra time during March to collect taxes from taxpayers, have now been moved to poll-related works.

Contrary to the usual surge in tax collection during March (being the last month of a financial year) every year, it has in fact dwindled as the civic body’s revenue staff were occupied in poll-related works for the last two weeks.

Besides the average collection of property tax of about Rs1.5 crore per day during the other months, Corporation used to collect about Rs 50 to 60 crore during March alone. 


But, being an election year and the revenue staff given the additional task of conducting Assembly elections in city, the tax collection has been hit badly and the month’s collection has not even exceeded the Rs 10-crores mark in the first 15 days, sources said.

Though the property tax collection was well on course till January, the mega exercise of Census in February and election-related work in March, where the revenue department staff were fully utilised, have hit the collection of late.

While admitting the tax collection has indeed slumped since February due to additional tasks for its staff, Corporation Commissioner D Karthikeyan said that the civic body was very much on track to surpass the target by the month-end.

“We are planning to send e-notices to 30,000-odd taxpayers who have defaults of over Rs10,000 in a couple of days and it could make them pay on time,” Karthikeyan said.

About two weeks ago, the civic body for the first time sent such e-notices to 40,000-defaulters by a centralised database from and the response from the taxpayers was good, he added.