Navi Mumbai

The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has decided to serve notices on private and nationalised banks that have failed to pay cess on gold sale transactions amounting to Rs 1,500 crore to the civic body. As many as 25 banks with 125 branches in Navi Mumbai have failed to pay the one per cent cess on selling gold.

Deputy municipal commissioner (cess department) of the NMMC, Mahavir Pendhari, said that banks selling gold have to pay one per cent of the total monetary transaction as cess. In other cities like Mumbai, Thane etc octroi of one per cent is collected from banks selling gold.

Customers prefer buying gold from banks in the form of lumps, biscuits etc as banks claim to sell 99.9 per cent pure gold. The NMMC’s cess department which started cracking down on banks for non-payment of cess recently recovered Rs 1.5 crore from three banks in merely two days. “Our officials go to each branch and put notices about non-payment of dues,” said Pendhari.

This drive comes close on the heels of notices being sent to celebrities for non-payment of cess on luxury cars. NMMC said it would seek police help to freeze bank accounts of defaulters.

Cess is a simplified form of octroi introduced by the state government in Navi Mumbai in 1996. Unlike octroi, cess is collected from the dealer or the buyer rather than from octroi posts. In Mumbai, the buyer has to pay 5.5 per cent of the vehicle price as octroi.

Source: www.indianexpress.com

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