Pay holding tax of Municipality online

The much-await­ed online col­lec­tion of hold­ing tax by the munic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion will begin from Novem­ber 1.

Equipped with hand-held devices, employ­ees of the Bhubaneswar Munic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion (BMC) will vis­it res­i­dences and busi­ness estab­lish­ments across the city to col­lect the tax. The machine will gen­er­ate the bills and after the trans­ac­tion process is over, the infor­ma­tion will be sent imme­di­ate­ly to the cen­tral serv­er of the BMC to ensure bet­ter tax col­lec­tion. The project will also facil­i­tate pay­ment of hold­ing tax at the munic­i­pal corporation’s por­tal www.bmc.gov.in.

How­ev­er, the facil­i­ty to sub­mit tax at Jan Seva Kendras (JSKs) across the city will also remain available.

The online col­lec­tion of hold­ing tax was ini­tial­ly planned to begin on August 31, which is observed as local self-gov­ern­ment day. But it was delayed due to tech­ni­cal prob­lems as the data­base prepa­ra­tion and pro­cure­ment of the geo-posi­tion­ing sys­tem (GPS) enabled hand-held devices took time.

On a pilot basis, the online col­lec­tion of hold­ing tax will begin in tax ward No. 11. The ward includes areas such as Jayadev Vihar, part of VSS Nagar, Sainik School local­i­ty and Chan­drasekharpur. The city is split into 15 tax wards and ward No. 11 hap­pens to be the biggest. While there are 80,000 hold­ings in the city, under the pilot tax ward project there are 27,000 holdings.

Pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer-cum-assis­tant com­mis­sion­er (slum), BMC, Binaya Kumar Das said: “This will help peo­ple pay hold­ing tax from the com­fort of their homes. How­ev­er, they have to vis­it our office once to get reg­is­tered for the facil­i­ty and col­lect hold­ing num­bers. Once a per­son gets the hold­ing num­ber, the pay­ment process becomes easy and they can either pay to the tax col­lec­tors or use the online option.’’

By the end of Sep­tem­ber, the BMC was ready with its hold­ing tax data­base for tax ward No. 11. How­ev­er, as the exe­cut­ing agency could not pro­cure the hand-held devices on time, the online facil­i­ty could not com­mence and the dead­line was extend­ed till Novem­ber 1.

The online process of hold­ing tax col­lec­tion is part of the state government’s e‑municipality ini­tia­tive. Once suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed in the city, the project is like­ly to be repli­cat­ed in oth­er civic bod­ies across Odisha.

Subhran­shu Pat­naik, a res­i­dent of Jayadev Vihar, said: “The online col­lec­tion of hold­ing tax is a good idea. Though it is run­ning a lit­tle late, it will serve the civic body bet­ter by min­imis­ing the role of man­u­al work and func­tion­ing of tax collectors.’’

There are 10 tax col­lec­tors under tax ward No. 11.

“At present, we have 20 hand-held devices and will put 10 into ser­vice to col­lect the hold­ing tax. The remain­ing 10 will be used as stand-by machines and for tri­al in oth­er tax wards. We have asked for the sub­scriber iden­ti­ty mod­ule (SIM) for the machines and they will be ready for use from Novem­ber 1,’’ a senior BMC offi­cial said.

The hand-held devices will be GPS-enabled and, there­fore, col­lec­tion time, place and trans­ac­tion details will get trans­ferred to the BMC main serv­er instantly.

SERVICE TO BEGIN ON NOV. 1

• From Nov. 1, house own­er can check amount of tax to be paid online as per the plinth area and type of hold­ing, which is either res­i­den­tial or commercial
• After get­ting to know the amount, he/she can vis­it BMC office to apply for hold­ing tax
• Once the “hold­ing num­ber” is gen­er­at­ed, it can be used to pay tax­es to a tax col­lec­tor who will turn up at your home with a hand-held device. Pay­ments can also be made online or at Jan Seva Kendras
• Equipped with GPS-enabled devices, the pay­ment will be updat­ed in the BMC account

Source: Tele­graph