CHANDIGARH: The municipal corporation has sent first lot of notice to the 40 commercial properties of the city, which failed to pay their property tax to the civic body in the three-month rebate period of April to June.

Since the rebate period ended on 30th June, out of around 40,000 commercial properties, only around 14,000 properties have paid the tax amount to the authority during this rebate period.

Since the MC started to send the notices, they have planned that initially notices will be sent to the commercial properties, but soon the list of the residential properties will also be prepared to send notices to the defaulter residents also, who failed to pay the tax during the rebate period.

“all these 40 notices, which have been sent in the first lot, belong to different area. All these notices are carrying a financial cost of around rupees 10 lakh. Since these properties have failed to pay the amount, now they will have to pay penalty as well as interest over it with their principal amount, failing which strict action will be taken against them, which can go upto sealing their properties too”, a senior official told.

TheMC had received Rs 36.06 crore property tax during the rebate period andmaximum of it was from commercial properties only. Though, most taxpayers came from the residential segment, more tax money came from commercial properties, which can be due to high charges of commercial properties as compared to the residential properties.