Kolkata: Firhad Hakim, Chairman Board of Administrators of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, on Saturday rolled out a waiver scheme for both interest and penalty in property tax. The waiver will be effective till May 2021.
"We will be allowing complete waiver of pending tax in the first five months from October to February 2021 when the penalty and interest will be zero and the defaulter will only have to pay the principal amount. If the dues are cleared after five months, we will allow 60 percent discount in interest and 99 percent in case of penalty," said Hakim.
The persons who have received their bill by March in the last financial year ending March 31, 2020, will be entitled to derive the benefit of the waiver scheme. People interested to avail the facilities of the waiver will have to apply before December 31 this year.
Payments can be made in both online and offline mode and persons who will apply for the waiver scheme will get fresh bills. Hakim on Saturday handed over fresh bills to four persons applying for the waiver.
The civic body had sent the proposal to the state government for the waiver in the month of July in a desperate bid to compensate for the huge loss in property tax revenue with the lockdown since the third week of March. It was in September when the state government gave the nod to go forward with the scheme.
According to sources in KMC's revenue department, this is the third waiver scheme in the KMC. The first waiver scheme was introduced during the tenure of Subrata Mukherjee (2000-2005) and was followed during that of Sovan Chatterjee (2010-2015). It had allowed the defaulters to pay only the principal arrear with penalty and interest for non-payment being waived.