KARACHI: The Sindh government has launched a drive to recover property tax dues from residents of localities earlier classified as ‘no-go’ areas. The areas, which include Liaquatabad, New Karachi, North Karachi, Baldia Town, Banaras, and Qasba Colony etc, were recently cleared in the joint operation between Rangers and police.

Sources in the excise and taxation department said that property tax challans and notices have been served to residents of these areas to recover tax along with arrears accrued from penalties for non-payment for the last five years.

However, residents of these areas, residing mostly in small and medium-housing units, are refusing to pay the penalty for non-payment because they maintain that they did not receive the tax challans in time.

A resident of North Karachi, Ataullah, said that the house owners were being penalised for no fault of their own as they were not responsible for creating conditions which prevented the tax authorities to serve challans.

He said that the tax dues and arrears for non-payment for the last five years come to thousands of rupees and it is beyond the paying capacity of the poor and middle-class residents.

He appealed to the Sindh government to waive the penalty for non-payment and recover only actual tax dues in easy instalments.

Faulty equipment slows down process

Meanwhile, tax officials are facing problems in issuing the large number of tax challans electronically due to faulty and outdated computer modems introduced eight years ago. The system is not only slow but also has incorrect data.

They pointed out that the idea of computerised challan was introduced in the last 4-5 years but has still not achieved full coverage. The property tax directorate issues tax challans through computers as well as manually to cope with the hundreds of thousands of challans issued at the start of each financial year.

An official revealed on condition of anonymity that on average the ratio of computerised tax challans is only 30 per cent while 70pc of tax bills are issued manually.

In most of the areas where access was forbidden to the tax inspectors, housing units measuring 120 and 80sq yards are exempted from property tax. However 120sq yards units with added floors are subject to tax.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2017