Organising marriage ceremony is going to be costlier even in open space as the municipal corporation of Haldwani (MCH) is going to bring these open spaces used for organizing functions like marriages by the hotels or banquet hall owners in tax net.
Of late, organising marriages in open space by the hotels and banquet hall owners has become a very common practice. On the one hand by bringing the marriages ceremonies to the open areas the interior designers and organisers try to add grandness to such marriages ceremonies, on the other they also cleverly attempt to avoid tax, said the tax experts.
According to the experts , covered area of a hotel or banquet hall is already taxed in the form of house tax. Perhaps to be out of the definition of the covered area, programmes are now also being held in open space, they added.
The matter of fact is that even if the marriages are held in open space, finally, cleanliness of the area has to be maintained by the municipal corporation or the local civic body, said B S Chalal, Additional Chief Municipal Officer, while talking to The Pioneer.
Ultimately the respective civic body has to look after the cleanliness of the area/ open space post marriage ceremony as in and around the progamme site becomes quite unhygienic. Therefore, we are contemplating on how such open space which are used for organising marriages could be brought under the tax net, though a kind of house tax is already collected from the hotel or the banquet hall owners, Chalal furher said.
It is worth mention here that to bring open space used for marriages under the tax net could come in handy for the MCH whose financial health is only getting deteriorated day by day. The local civic body of the Haldwani is not even able to pay salaries of its employees on its own.
While it has to pay about Rs 10.20 crore as salary to its employees per annum or about Rs 85 lakh per month, the annual income of the said civic body is only about Rs 1.73 crore.
Besides, a grant of about Rs 10 crore i.e. 2.5 crore in every third month of the year, the MCH also receives from the Government. The grant that we receive from the Government mostly goes on salaries of the employees, the officials concerned of the MCH further said. There are over 400 employees working with the MCH. End.