Benefits now, taxes later

Tax collections have become quite a fashion in Goa these days. They appear to have every connotation you can think of including the philosophy behind taxation, except, of course, the thought of how it originally started. For the good and benefit of the taxpayer, that is. There is however one concept I would really, really like if it could be adopted. That is the concept of ‘enjoy now, pay later’ just like the travel now and pay your EMIs later that one travel company introduced but abandoned not too soon afterwards. Imagine what an ideal world it would be, if say, the Corporation of the City of Panjim had to actually give you the benefits now and taxed you later. In other words wait till you avail of the benefit, and later pay your tax, if you are satisfied with the service, that is. Not going to happen. For the record, the CCP collected a total of Rs 831.17 lakh by way of taxes in 2005-2006. In 2006-07 the figure was Rs 975.18 lakh. In 2007-08 the figure was Rs 983.05. The break up is house tax Rs 391.96 lakh, building licence fees Rs 95.52, sopo Rs 3.82 lakh, establishment licence fee Rs 11 lakh, signboard/hoardings Rs 16.43 lakh, others Rs 464.32 lakh. That’s quite impressive, though at the pace your councilors are permitting buildings to be built and signboards to be displayed, you may soon not be able to find your way home or you could get lost trying to. Imagine in your own city! Some of the scenes of traffic congestion in Panjim and Margao already look like clips from disaster films like ‘Volcano’ and ‘Independence Day’

Churchill Brothers Pvt. Ltd

In Margao where only a total ban on cars would decongest what journos have for decades loved to call the commercial capital of Goa (frankly how less commercial is Mapusa than Margao?) the tax collected in 2005-06 was Rs 583.41 lakh, and Rs 561.03 lakh in 2006-07. In 2007-08 the figure was Rs 638.39 lakh. The break up is house tax Rs 249.11, building licence fees Rs 153.53, sopo Rs 24.90 lakh, establishment licence fee Rs 14.38 lakh, signboard/hoardings Rs 10.12 lakh, others Rs 186.35 lakh. The collections look impressive on paper but only from the revenue point of view. Over the din created by Churchill Brothers Pvt. Ltd (incorporated in Varca) making charges of being backstabbed by their corporate headquarters, did you hear them speak of the woes faced by the people of Margao? No, it was only about their personal problems. Never mentioned was that Margao has no single decent civic amenity of India-class, forget world-class. Did you hear Sardinha for that matter – raising his tall stature when not looking downwards with eyes downcast – embarrassed at being rubbished by Churchill Brothers Pvt. Ltd, talking of Margao as a constituency that needed to be developed? That its civic amenities were not worth mentioning? Oh, I forgot, being an MP is all about making speeches in the Lok Sabha, and it doesn’t matter if they make no sense at all.

Where there is a will there is a way

Then there is Mormugao that collected a total tax of Rs Rs 591.11 in 2007-08 and Mapusa - Rs 389.78, Ponda -Rs 134.75 lakh and Bicholim -Rs 144.35 lakh, and Canacona which at a tax collection of Rs 112.43 lakh rounded up the municipalities that have revenue collections of above one hundred lakhs. Of real note here is the fact that the total of 14 muncipalities collected Rs 486.15 lakh as building licence fees. That shouldn’t surprise you. What should is the fact that the Margao’s licence fee collection at Rs 153.53 lakh was far bigger than Panjim’s at Rs 95.52 lakh. This makes me recall for instance of where I worked in the past and of how efficient municipalities transformed Hyderabad.

The tech-savvy Chandrababu Naidu, may have ignored farmers committing suicide in the rural areas, but he transformed Hyderabad into Cyberabad. Every neighbourhood had an e-seva counter where you could pay your property tax, electricity bill, telephone bill, water tax. The people behind the desktop’s were efficient and polite and what would have taken hours in the past after standing in serpentine queues was over in minutes. That’s why Naidu became the darling of the middle classes and was allowed to preen as the CEO of Andhra Pradesh.

And when President Bill Clinton came visiting Hyderabad in 2000, Naidu presented him with a driving licence that had been readied with the click of a few buttons in just a few minutes. Clinton was very impressed just like he was with the city which shouted out to anyone who visited that taxes were being ploughed back to improve the city’s infrastructure. By the way, this year the annual income of the Greater Hyderabad Municpal Corporation is around Rs 1,100 crore that includes property tax collections and through advertisements, trade licenses and building permissions. Want to bet on where it will go?

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