Mysuru: During Mysuru City Corporation Council (MCC) meeting, it came to light that among 165 government offices across the city, 103 of them including CFTRI, Railway office, University of Mysore, for the past many years, have not paid their annual service charges and various cess to the corporation.
During the meeting at MCC here on July 31, Corporator Ravindrakumar raised the issue about non-payment of various charges by government offices. When it was exposed, the corporators cutting across party lines, took serious exception to the officials’ failure in collecting the taxes. The service charges run to several crores of rupees. If these revenues are collected by revenue officials, corporation can heave a sigh of relief and take up various developmental works.
Former mayor and corporator Srikantaiah asked the reason for the government offices not paying the tax for which the officials had no answer. Surprisingly, the corporation officials were not in a position to give details regarding how many years these government offices had failed to give service charges. Few corporators even questioned the House that how could MCC ask private property owners to pay the taxes when the government offices themselves are not paying them promptly.
Mayor M J Ravikumar, took serious note of the lapses and directed the revenue inspectors concerned to collect the service charges or service taxes immediately failing which, he warned that they would be relieved from their work.
Speaking to Newskarnataka, Corporation Commissioner Jagadeesh said, “Though both state and central government offices are exempted from paying property tax, they have to pay service charges and various other cess. Since I took charge as commissioner, I have served notice to all these offices. Through these charges and cess we should get crores of rupees. University of Mysore has not paid any tax while CFTRI owes us Rs 6 Crore.”
Additional Rs 30 Crore property tax collected:
Jagadeesh also said, “Through door-to-door property tax collection, we have gathered about Rs 30 Crore. In days to come, more such collections will be taken up and we are expecting to generate an additional Rs 50 Crore.”
