MARGAO: The raising of taxes by the Margao Municipality has raised heat and dust. Many people have protested the raising of taxes and said that it does not constitute better services. Herald Media asked people from Margao what their opinion is on the MMC tax hike?
The taxes have been increased beyond limit. There should be a slab. They can’t raise the taxes too much. It is said they have raised taxes by more than 500 percent. Most of the shops in the Margao area do not have trade licences. And they are operating without trade licences. In my own building at Fatorda, without occupancy people are staying in the flat. The shops too are running without a trade licence. Why is the MMC not collecting their taxes? Do common people have to pay taxes and the defaulters don’t have to pay taxes? The MMC should send inspectors and conduct a survey and find out who is paying, or not paying taxes.
Franklin D'Costa, Tax Payer
We had organized a protest. Now we learn that even in the vicinity of the municipality, only 20% of the people are paying taxes. Simple solution is please collect the money which is outstanding first. If you collect these (outstanding) taxes for one year, MMC will have to lower their taxes. Do this first, then also collect the money which has been siphoned off. If they recover these dues, this will be good for the citizens. Secondly, they have fed nothing into the NIC system. They have played April fool joke. They were supposed to implement the tax hike from 1st April, but they don’t know that it is a bank holiday. What kind of management is this?
Lincoln Gomes, Tax Payer
We have constantly raised our voices that the process adopted to hike these taxes is itself illegal. There are errors in the notification. Today we casually found out that the staff have been told to feed into the computer the individual shop areas. They don’t have the data as to how big the shops are of the tax payers. They have to refer to the house tax file. There are cases where three shops have been amalgamated into one shop. This data is not there with MMC. Only the tax receipt there is tax of only one shop. So how can they calculate the tax? I just can’t understand how the Margao MLA silent on this. The MMC wants to put the people in trouble.
Savio Coutinho Shadow Council