Kirtipur, June 22

Kirtipur Municipality has decided not to increase tax in the next fiscal in view of the hurdles facing municipality citizens due to coronavirus.

The municipality’s Revenue Advisory Committee said the municipality would not increase the rate of any type of tax and retain the existing tax rate in view of the impact of the pandemic on trade and business. An emergency meeting of the committee on June 16 decided to this effect.

Deputy Mayor and Committee convenor Saraswoti Rijal said the committee had decided to retain the existing tax rate for fiscal 2020-21. She said the committee’s report had already been submitted to Mayor Ramesh Maharjan. However, the municipal executive has not made the final decision yet.

The municipal executive is holding a meeting on Tuesday and it is expected to recommend to the Municipal Assembly not to increase tax when it endorses the municipality’s finance bill for the fiscal year 2020-21. The Municipal Assembly is set to convene on June 24. The municipality had set the target of collecting Rs 120 million in revenue in fiscal 2019-20, but it managed to collect only Rs 8.45 million as of June 14.

Meanwhile, Kirtipur Municipality is preparing to set up a PCR lab at the Blood Bank building operated by Lions Club inside the Tribhuvan University Campus. Rijal said operation of the lab had reached the final stage.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on June 23, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.