This story is from July 23, 2014

RMC hires private firm to collect taxes from August

Ranchiites will soon be able to pay civic taxes sitting at home as the municipal body has finally outsourced tax collection task to a private entity five months after it was proposed.
RMC hires private firm to collect taxes from August
RANCHI: Ranchiites will soon be able to pay civic taxes sitting at home as the municipal body has finally outsourced tax collection task to a private entity five months after it was proposed.
Sparrow Softech, hired by Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC), will appoint field officers to collect taxes from the doorstep. Vice President of the company Deepankar Kumar said, "The project we are handling is named 'survey assessment collection and recovery of property tax, water user charges and municipal fee' (trade licence).
We will deploy around 120-130 staff, including field officers and team leaders, for grievance redressal cell."
The private entity will start functioning from August and deploy field officers in all the 55 wards for tax collection, it was decided at a meeting on Saturday. These collectors will have hand-held machines for issuing receipts to taxpayers.
The outsourcing company will have a toll-free number for registering complaints or other enquiry. "The number is 1800-121-2241 which will start working from the day our field officers start collecting taxes, which will probably be from August," Kumar said.
According to data available with the company, there are around 2 lakh households under RMC's jurisdiction of which only 86,000 households pay taxes leading to a huge revenue loss. "RMC was short-staffed and needed a third party for tax collection. We are hoping that revenue collection will increase three to fourfold once we start collecting taxes," Kumar added.
Deputy mayor Sanjeev Vijayavargiya said at present tax collection is around Rs 12 crore per annum which is "likely to increase to Rs 70-80 crore". "The company has been deputed on a revenue-sharing basis that will be beneficial for the company as well as for RMC," said Vijayavargiya.
The company will first distribute assessment forms to the households before they start collection to create a database on information about taxpayers.
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