Mapusa: In a bid to shore up its revenue collection, the Mapusa Municipal Council (MMC) has decided to increase a host of charges for various services. This was decided in a special council meeting of the MMC on Monday, which was convened to discuss several
issues, including the enhancement of taxes, fees, rents and fines for the financial year 2023-24.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
A special council meeting was conveyed by Chairperson Priya Mishal which continued for almost four hours especially to discuss the increase in taxes. While some taxes and fees were increased, some taxes including trade licence, pet dog tax, tax for wet waste and others were deferred.
At the meeting, MMC decided to charge Rs 5,000 as penalty for starting business without a valid trade license, against Rs 3,000 charged earlier, also resolved to increase the collection of trade licence fee from Rs 500 to 700,
Duplicate trade licence fee from Rs 100 to 200. Rs 5,000 will be levied as Professional Tax, which was not being done earlier.
The Council will also be charging Rs 2000 each for sale deed and agreements and Rs 5000 each for commercial sale deed and commercial agreement. Decision on most of the taxes and fees was deferred as the council were of the opinion that before increasing the taxes and fee, it needs to be studied and discussed within all the councillors.
Councillor Ashirwad Khorjuvekar who is also the chairman of Market committee said that shop owners are suffering as similar businesses are being done by vendors at the roadside and making more profits than the shop owners. These illegalities need to be cleared. We need to protect the shop owners by stopping all the illegalities.
