Zhemgang town is clustered on a slope surrounded by the Black Mountain range. Like every Bhutanese town, its 20-odd shops crowd a small stretch of road that wriggles through them. It’s been that way for many years.
In 1990, though, the government decided to shift the town and the Zhemgang dzongkhag’s office to Tingtibi, 35km south. That decision was officially resolved during the 7th five year plan meeting in the dzongkhag in 1992.
Pending the town’s relocation, the dzongkhag suspended the collection of urban land tax in 1990. But the town never moved. Nor was the tax reactivated.
Now after 17 years, the Zhemgang dzongkhag has issued a notice to the town’s 23 landowners to pay up the land tax - in arrears.
The dzonghag has told the owners to submit their tax receipts till July 2007. It includes land tax, urban house tax, property transfer tax, land allotment and development fee, land demarcation fee, building plan processing fee, septic tank cleaning fee. Payments, residents say, they stopped from 1990 on dzongkhag’s instruction.
“We surrendered our tax receipts to the government in 1990,” said one of the landowners, Galey Wangmo. After 1990, she said, nobody asked for it, until now.
She’s not alone in her response. Landowner Jamtshola, 58, says his father, who expired a few years ago, had told him that their tax receipts were submitted to the dzongkhag. Some landowners, like the former royal advisory councillor, Dasho Tshewang Dorji, though, have tax receipts till 1993 but not after.
The Zhemgang dzongkhag, however, insists that the owners must pay what they owe the government. The dzongkhag engineer, Kezang Penjore, said that the landowners haven’t paid taxes “liable to the Bhutan Building Rules and Taxation Policy for almost 17 years.”
Dzongkhag’s municipal officers were working on the amount of money each landowner had to pay. Zhemgang municipal engineer, Budhiman Pradhan, said: “Most probably the plot holders might have to make arrear payments.”
For instance, a landowner liable to pay Nu 12,000 a year before could now, in arrears from 1990 to 2007, end up shelling out Nu 2,04,000 just on land tax.
There are discrepancies as well. “Some plot owners have receipts of taxes paid till 1993 while others have till 1988,: said Budhiman Pradhan.
The landowners are miffed. One said the responsibility of the present problem was due in largest part to the “irresponsible dzonghag officials then.”
“If the concerned authorities forgot to collect the tax, why should the plot holders bear their mistakes,” said one, who did not want to be named.
Meanwhile, the previous dzongkhag officials are no more in town, having been transferred to other dzongkhags.
Zhemgang town chimi, Najay, said that the town was not even properly developed, and that its landowners were being bullied into paying urban land taxes in arrears.
The Royal Audit Authority pointed out the issue in 2006. “We directed the dzongkhag to work out the problem at the soonest,” said the authority’s administrative officer in Bumthang, Dechen Lhendup.
Tingtibi town plan was scrapped because planners found out the place had limited space for expansion.
No one knows how this situation will end because no one has the answers. Not at the moment, anyway. Source: Kuenselonline
