Construction Industry News
The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has faced a setback in its efforts to collect property tax for the fiscal year 2024-25 as more than a third of the tax bills delivered to India Post were returned undelivered. Of the 564,188 tax bills issued across ten zones, 189,190 (or 33.53%) were returned by the postal department due to reasons such as incorrect addresses and locked houses.
In a bid to improve tax collection, NMC had entered into an agreement with India Post to deliver tax bills to the addresses of homeowners, paying Rs 32 per item for this service through India Post’s speed post facility. However, the delays and inefficiencies in the delivery of these bills had a direct financial impact on both homeowners and the NMC. Around 189,000 homeowners who did not receive their bills on time missed out on a 10% (offline) to 15% (online) rebate on property tax payments, which was effective till June 30. This rebate was intended to ease the financial burden on residents and encourage timely tax payments.
A senior official, who was aware of the situation, said that to address the issue of undelivered bills, NMC teams from all the ten zones would now distribute the remaining bills directly to homeowners. The outstanding property tax arrears currently stand at nearly Rs 8.5 billion, with a demand for the current financial year of Rs 2.8 billion. Any further delay or failure in distributing tax bills could have a serious impact on NMC’s revenue generation. A senior official from the NMC’s accounts and finance department acknowledged that property tax is a major source of revenue for the civic body and these funds are essential for strengthening Nagpur’s municipal infrastructure, including road construction and sanitation.
The number of failed deliveries varied from zone to zone, with Nehru Nagar zone seeing the highest number of returns. Of the 84,206 bills sent to India Post for this zone, 41,419 were returned, which amounted to 49.18% of the total. Hanuman Nagar zone also reported a significant number of returns, with 22,213 of the 73,721 bills returned, which amounts to a non-delivery rate of 30.12%. These figures indicated that a large section of homeowners in these areas were unreachable. Dhantoli, on the other hand, had the lowest return rate, with only 1,089 of the 20,893 bills returned, resulting in a non-delivery rate of 5.21%.
With nearly one in three bills being returned undelivered and many homeowners missing out on rebate opportunities, it is clear that NMC needs to take urgent action. Improving address verification and updating property details will be crucial to ensuring more residents receive their bills on time, so they can meet their tax obligations and NMC can avoid further setbacks in revenue collection.
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