‘Soft stand on LBT dues cost TMC crores’

A city-based RTI activist has accused the TMC of foregoing crores of rupees that would have been collected as Local Body Tax (LBT) by failing to act against willful tax defaulters since 2014.
Over 18,000 traders are yet to pay LBT with the dues running into crores, an RTI query posed by activist Sanjeev Datta has revealed.
“It is surprising that the administration has been silent about these dues and is neither revealing their identities or its action plan to recover the dues.If this money is recovered, the corporation could easily be richer by a few hundred crores,” Datta said.
The activist first approached the TMC seeking information about its LBT dues after the state government’s decision to abolish the tax came into effect from August 2015.
Datta said he wanted to know the exact number of tax payers and the status of defaulters.
The administration responded to the query saying it had no knowledge of the number of defaulters, he said. After regular follow-ups, the administration informed him that of the 30,000 traders in the city, around 18,000 hadn’t yet paid their taxes.
“The TMC kept telling me that they were yet to conduct an audit as the number of traders to pay the tax was yet to be ascertained,” Datta said.
Manish Joshi, in-charge of the LBT department, denied the allegations and said the department had given information permitted under the RTI Act.
“We cannot give out personal details the defaulters. Unlike, octroi, LBT requires self-declaration and we cannot hound those who haven’t paid taxes as is the case with other departments. There is no attempt to shield any defaulter,” Joshi told TOI.