Residents would soon have to pay more to own property or to reside in the city.

Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) faces a mammoth task of meeting the 2013-14 target of an almost three-fold hike in revenue fixed by the urban development and housing department.

The department has equipped the civic body with several tools to meet the target. It has introduced garbage collection and water charges, raised holding tax and introduced policy measures like new property tax rules that gives the corporation the right to attach defaulters’ property. (See graphics)

“The PMC’s financial condition is pretty bad, like that of most other local bodies. Recent estimates put the national average holding tax collection at Rs 486, but the same for PMC is Rs 125. Thus, it was imperative for the department to provide tools in the form of new tax policy measures to improve the financial condition of PMC and other local bodies,” said a senior official of urban development and housing department.

Residents, however, are confused over whether paying hefty taxes would do any good to them in terms of better civic amenities.

“It is true that hike in revenue through increased taxes can enable the civic body to serve residents better. However, funds for certain schemes, such as the solid waste management project for Patna, come from the central or state government but still do not get executed properly. Moreover, poor people would not be able to pay such heavy taxes every month,” said Saurav Sinha, a resident of SK Puri.

The civic body collected Rs 17 crore as revenue in 2010-11 fiscal. The target for holding tax collection in 2011-12 fiscal was Rs 31.18 crore and the actual amount collected was Rs 27.31 crore.

Similarly, the target for the same in 2012-13 was Rs 32.12 crore, while the actual amount collected was Rs 27.43 crore.

The civic body seemed to agree with the idea of increasing the tax burden on residents in lieu of better civic services.

“Door-to-door garbage collection charges would be imposed only when every doorstep would be spick and span. The charges are meagre. Water charges, too, would be imposed only when all houses are connected with supply lines. The PMC holding tax would be hiked after 18 years instead of every five years. So, any measure to increase tax collection is justified, provided it ensures better services to residents,” PMC deputy mayor Rup Narain Mehta said.

Around 1,91,000 city holdings are registered with the civic body.

However, recent estimates put the total number of buildings in the city to around 4.5 lakh.

The civic body is also taking several steps on its own to increase the ambit of holding tax by making geographic information system-based maps of all the apartments and setting up tax camps in different wards to allow residents to pay tax at their doorstep.

“We are doing GIS-based mapping of all 72 wards in PMC area. Also, GPS-based photography of all under-construction buildings is also being done. This would help us identify a number of holdings not covered under holding tax,” said Mehta.

To increase the holding tax ambit, the PMC has set up 10-day-long camps in all its four circles starting from Monday.

“Though the municipal corporation is not required to hold camps for tax collection and residents are supposed to voluntarily make the payments, this is the second time in the past two weeks that we have set up camps in different areas for taxpayers’ ease. A discount of five per cent is also given to those paying taxes in these camps,” said a senior official of the corporation.