HMC all set to introduce online tax payment system

Kolkata: The Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC) is all set to introduce the online payment system of property tax.

This was decided at a high-level meeting held in HMC recently. It was presided over by Mayor Rathin Chakraborty. It may be mentioned that Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) have already introduced the system for collection of property tax.

Arun Roychudhury, member, Mayor in Council for Tax and License, said the system will benefit the property tax payers immensely. A property owner can now go to the website of HMC and give the holding number of the premises or the assessee number of the premises, to get the property tax amount which he/she has to pay.

It has been decided that the online system will be introduced in wards 1 to 50 and will be later introduced in the 16 wards that fall under Bali. There are 1.42 lakh property tax payers in Howrah and another 27,000 in Bali.

The HMC has also introduced the system of paying property tax through credit and debit cards. Counters have been opened in the seven borough offices and employees are extending all possible help to the property tax payers in this regard.

Earlier, to pay property tax, property owners had to go to the HMC headquarters and stand in long queues, a process which often took several hours to complete. The present system will help them to save time and embarrassment, Roychowdhury said.

He said the new system may have some teething problem at the beginning, but the problems that will be detected will be ironed out subsequently.

The HMC had placed an order to a private firm to prepare the software for the online tax payment system. To make people aware of the new system, HMC will send a pamphlet along with the property tax bill next month.