Navi Mumbai

Top celebs, VIPs get notices from Navi Mumbai cess dept

NAVI MUMBAI: Top celebrities and VIPs, including a cricketer, a singer, a business tycoon and several builders, have been slapped with notices from the cess department of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) for failure to pay tax on purchase of luxury cars.

In all, the NMMC has to collect over Rs 70 crore in cess from individuals for vehicle sales in 2009, for which over 24,000 notices have been sent. Another whopping Rs 100 crore cess tax has to be collected from a state government agency which did not pay the cess amount to the civic body.

Nearly 30 famous personalities are among those to get notices for not paying the mandatory cess duties on car purchases. In fact, the NMMC is surprised that some of the “rich and famous people” have bought over a dozen luxury cars like Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, Porches and Audi from Navi Mumbai region in order to save money, yet failed to pay the cess to NMMC.

A Cess a simplified form of Octroi. The advantage of paying cess is that the vehicle owner will not be stopped at any octroi post to cough up the tax, as was done in the past.

“In order to save money, the rich and the famous buy cars from Navi Mumbai region, which only levies a cess of 1%, unlike the steep 5.5% octroi charged on car sales in Mumbai region. Even then, they do not pay the cess valid on such purchases,” said an NMMC official.

In fact, the famous cricketer who recently bought a BMW car from a Navi Mumbai dealer, has reportedly given a wrong residential address at the RTO registration office.

However, Navi Mumbai based car owners are complaining that the onus of paying cess technically lies with the car dealer, so why should the buyer be harassed with notices.

The chief spokesperson of NMMC, J N Sinnarkar, said, “I don’t know if there are any famous personalities who have been sent notices. You will have to talk to the head of Cess department, Mahavir Pendhari, but he will be available on Monday.” Sinnarkar, however, confirmed that Navi Mumbai is a popular destination for car purchases, due to the low cess tax of just 1% of the vehicle price.

In 2009, Navi Mumbai car dealers sold 996 luxury cars, including 233 Mercedes cars, 122 BMWs, 37 Audi models, 1 Hummer, 161 Honda CR-Vs, 18 Nissan make cars, 6 Porsches, 38 Pajeros, 110 Ford models, 45 Scodas, 2 Rolls Royce cars and 3 Lexus make vehicles.

Source: indiatimes.com

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