At a time when Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress is warming up for a February 3 Bangla bandh to protest the imposition of various taxes, the government is ready to collect a levy on land in the city, Howrah and other urban areas. The land tax scheme comes into effect next month.
The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government, for the first time, imposed tax on land by an enactment in the Assembly this year. The tax is in addition to the property tax levied by the civic bodies. Trinamul objection was voiced by mayor Subrata Mukherjee, who saw the move eating into the civic coffers.
For a speedy collection of tax, the land and land reforms department has introduced a self-assessment system. By the scheme, citizens will enjoy the liberty to assess their land and pay tax accordingly. No government official will knock on the doors to verify the amount of land held.
Department officials said the system will continue until a full-fledged infrastructure for tax collection was built up. “We will accept the tax paid by the land-owners and not question the sum or the amount of land held by the owners. Later, we will make adjustments, if needed, in case of any false declaration,’’ said land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah.
As the system is new, the minister said, there is no infrastructure or system to collect the money. “We have full faith in the people and expect that they will assess their land correctly and not suppress figures. After all, the amount collected by way of the tax will be used for the development of the city,’’ Mollah said.
Officials said the government had no option to accepting tax on a self-assessed basis as there is no latest record of land in the city.