LAHORE: Despite a lapse of seven months or so, the Punjab Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control (ET&NC) department has yet to start the process to collect property tax from the buildings and properties located on the national highways and motorways.
Seeking anonymity, a department’s official told Pakistan Today that the department had planned in September 2019 to bring more than 700,000 properties, located alongside the national highways and motorways in Punjab in Punjab, in tax net.
The department had planned to collect an amount of Rs5,000 to 8,000 from each property stretching up to one kanal, he added.
The department aims to collect additional Rs7 billion from these properties for which the property value is being determined with the help of respective deputy collectors’ rate.
The official said the department had earlier planned to enforce the property tax on such buildings from January 2020.
A sample survey was also conducted in this regard, which is still incomplete and due to negligence of the officials, it seems difficult to achieve the set annual target of property tax, he added.
When contacted, ET&NC Director General Suhail Shahzad acknowledged that the procedural issues to collect tax from properties situated alongside national highways and motorways were not yet completed.
“As these areas are not urban so we need special permission to collect property tax from these sides,” he added.
The department’s current target of property tax is Rs14 billion, while the process of tax collection from such properties would begin from July, Shahzad said.
