Tax officials of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) on Tuesday reached the Courtyard by Marriott Hyderabad to seal the premises at Lower Tank Bund Road. The star hotel had property tax dues of Rs 1.33 crore (Rs 1,33,78,841 precisely) along with arrears and had not paid despite being served with several notices. However, as the officials started the formalities to seal the hotel, the management immediately paid up 50 per cent of the amount due by a cheque made out for Tuesday and the remaining 50 per cent through post-dated cheques.
Further, the management gave in writing that it was willing to face any action in case the cheques bounced. This was because cheques worth Rs 23 lakh towards tax, issued by the hotel last year, had bounced. The tax raid included 35 officials from the tax wing led by deputy municipal commissioner M.S.S. Somaraju and execution officer Vinay Kapoor, along with five enforcement vehicles. GHMC commissioner (central) K. Ilambarthi told Deccan Chronicle the special drive for attachment of properties against “big defaulters” would continue. “There are 32 properties each owing over Rs 50 lakh tax dues to the Corporation in the Central Zone alone,” he said. GHMC commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu has directed officials to serve “red notices”, a final warning, before attachment of properties. If the owners do not pay tax even after being served with red notices, their properties will be attached. There are nearly one lakh tax defaulters owing over Rs 150 crore to GHMC and the names of the top 1,000 defaulters are displayed on the GHMC website. The property tax dues collected from the Marriot Hotel were issued under the names of Viceroy Hotel, M/s Krishna Bottlers Private Limited and M/s Minerva Enterprises Pvt Ltd. Tax was calculated on 14 assessments on the above firms. The GHMC has set a target of collecting 720 crore towards property tax for the current financial year. The GHMC commissioner said officials in all the circle offices must ensure that attachment drives were taken up against defaulters to improve the tax collection and to reach the target.
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