City hotels fail to respond to property tax scrutiny notice, MC mulls action
A number of hotels and commercial establishments are not responding to scrutiny notices sent by the Municipal Corporation (MC) last month. MC officials suspect that there must be something amiss in cases where hotel owners are not responding to notices for the scrutiny of their self-assessment for property tax.
The Municipal Corporation had issued around 100 notices to hotels and some other commercial establishments in the walled city area to submit documents in order to scrutinise their self-assessment of property tax last month. MC officials were suspecting that a large number of hotels in the walled city area are paying less than their actual dues by submitting wrong information in self-assessment of property tax.
According to the information available, a number of hotels didn’t respond to the notices of the MC. Now, the property tax wing officials suspect that the hoteliers are hiding actual facts from them. MC officials believe that most hotels in the walled city area are operating on lease or rent. But to save tax, owners claim that they have self-occupied hotel premises. As per property tax rules, if an owner occupies his building and operates a hotel from the premises himself, then the MC collects tax as per the size and covered area of the property. In case of rented or leased hotels, the MC collects 7.5 per cent as property tax from its owners.
That is why the MC had asked hotel owners to submit registered documents of their property, lease and rent deeds, income tax and GST returns and previous property tax receipts in the first week of September.
Said Sushant Bhatia, Municipal Corporation Secretary, “We got response from several hotels about their self-assessment but those who didn’t respond will not be exempted. We will reassess their claims about property tax and conduct physical verification to collect the right amount of tax. The newly appointed MC Commissioner will join office on Monday and we will get directions from him for further action.”
