Visakhapatnam: The GVMC will take charge of collecting professional taxes in the city limits from this financial year. This will fetch the corporation about Rs 15 crore additional income. Speaking to the scribes here in the commissionerate on Tuesday, GVMC Commissioner M. Hari Narayanan informed that Hyderabad and Vijayawada municipal corporations had implemented the same from 2016. “We have discussed this with the Commercial Taxes department and awareness on the same is provided to the GVMC employees. We have made provisions to pay the professional taxes at the Saukaryam and Mee Seva centres and we will soon provide the option of online payments to the residents of Vizag city,” said Mr. Hari Narayanan.

The GVMC has collected about Rs 31.7 crore as property taxes through the early bird incentive scheme in April. “I request the residents of the city to pay all the taxes on time and so that we can take up various development works. We will intensify our efforts in identifying the under-assessments of property tax. If the under-assessees don’t come forward voluntarily, we don’t hesitate to penalise them. We increased the tax assessments by RS 2 crore by identifying about 8000 under-assessments in the 2016-17 financial year,” Mr. Hari Narayanan added.

The GVMC willimplement the source segregation of garbage from June 5 on World Environmental Day. The scheme was implemented in 32 Wards of the city.,” Mr. Narayanan added.