Existing structure of municipal taxes

By RUP KHADKA

The Local Self-Governance Act 1999 and the Local Self-Governance Regulations 1999 govern the existing structure of the municipal taxes which is as follows: Land Revenue/Bhumi Kar: Municipalities are authorized to levy land revenue/Bhumi Kar. These taxes are levied on land. Land revenue is levied on land other than the land that is subject to Bhumi Kar. On the recommendation of the municipalities, His Majesty’s Government of Nepal specifies the land that is subject to Bhumi Kar.

For the purpose of land revenue, land is divided into four categories, on the basis of the productivity of land viz. Abal, Doyam, Seem and Chahar. For the purpose of the Bhumi Kar, urban land is divided into six categories on the basis of residential and commercial importance of land.

Rates of land revenue/Bhumi Kar are fixed on the basis of a specific unit of area. The unit is Bigha (1.6 acre) in the Terai region and Ropani (0.12 acre) in other regions. Land revenue rates are graduated according to the type of land. The highest land revenue rate is levied on Abal land, then on Doyam land, Seem land, and finally on Chahar land. Similarly, rates of Bhumi Kar vary considerably by categories of land.

In the case of land revenue, maximum and minimum rates are fixed and municipalities can fix rates within these ranges as per their local conditions. But no such limits are fixed in the case of Bhumi Kar, meaning that municipalities have to adopt the given rates of Bhumi Kar.

House and land tax: Municipalities may levy house and land tax on each house and land within their jurisdiction on the basis of the size, type, design, construction and structure of the house and area covered by the house, as approved by the Municipal Council.

The base of the house and land tax is the capital value of house and land property and the tax is levied on the basis of a graduated rate schedule. The rate is fixed on a lump sum basis on the first slab of taxable value (i.e Rs 300 on the first taxable value of Rs 1 million) and 4 progressive rates (0.05 percent, 0.25 percent, 0.50 percent and 1.50 percent) are fixed for the higher values.

Integrated property tax: Municipalities are also empowered to levy an integrated property tax on land and buildings under their area of jurisdiction. For the purpose of this tax, a municipality shall have to stratify its area as per necessity, and a separate statement of integrated property of the residents or such stratification of each ward shall be prepared in the specified format. Upon the preparation of such a statement, the municipality shall constitute a Valuation Committee for a maximum period of one-year consisting of specialists and competent persons for the valuation of integrated property.

The value fixed by the municipality and the rate of the tax fixed by the Municipal Council to be levied thereon shall have to be published and the municipality shall have to send a bill within the month of Mangier (mid-November to mid-December) for the payment of tax. The tax must be paid as per the bill by the concerned taxpayer to the municipality within the same fiscal year.

No land revenue/Bhumi Kar, and house and land tax shall be levied on the property subject to the integrated property tax.

Rent Tax: Municipalities are empowered to levy a rent tax on the amount of rent in cases where any house, shop, garage, godown, stall, shed, factory, land or pond is rented wholly or partly within their jurisdiction. The rent tax may be levied at a rate not exceeding 2 percent of rent.

On the other hand, municipalities can also levy a tenancy tax on municipality-operated shops or permission given to
operate temporary shops in public places, unregistered land (Aailani) or roadsides at the rate of Rs 2 to Rs 20 per square feet.

Professional tax: Municipalities are empowered to levy a professional tax on the specified industry, trade, profession or occupation. Minimum and maximum rates for each category of profession are fixed and the municipalities can fix rates according to their local conditions within these limits.

Vehicle tax: Municipalities are authorized to levy an annual vehicle tax on the specified vehicles within their areas of jurisdiction and a per entry tax on all kinds of vehicles entering into their area.

Municipalities can also levy per entry tax on the use of the road constructed by them or transferred to them from other organisations. Municipalities can levy registration tax on carts, riksha and tanga at rates ranging from Rs 15 to Rs 50.

Entertainment tax: Municipalities may levy entertainment tax at the rate of 2 to 5 percent of entrance fees on the means of entertainment such as cinema halls, video halls and cultural show halls permitted within the municipal area. Similarly, municipalities can levy entertainment tax on the circus and magic shows at the rate of Rs 200 to Rs 500 per day.

Commercial video tax: Municipalities may levy tax at the rate of Rs 200 to Rs 500 per annum on per video, projector, cable etc used by any person or organization for commercial purpose.

Advertisement tax: Municipalities can levy an advertisement tax at rates ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 1000 on signboards, globe boards, stall etc permitted to be placed by roads, junctions, public places etc. under their jurisdiction.

Conveniently deaf, dumb, and blind

By SMRITI JAISWAL

Almost everything depends upon the way the public representatives represent themselves, their show of respect and understanding breeds respect and understanding in the nation, and their show of disrespect and insensitivity can cause deep fissures in the hearts and minds of the people.

At the meeting organised by the Terai Buddhijivi Samudaya, held on the 16th of March 02, the much esteemed president of the Nepali Congress party Girija Prasad Koirala, and the General Secretary of UML Madhav Kumar Nepal proved their shallow ideals and insufferable conceit. They proved and cut a clear picture of the racial discrimination being practiced most shamelessly and flagrantly in our country - a practice also most ignored and looked over. The ostrich attitude into which half of the nation is steeped is the attitude which revealed itself in the way. Koirala and Nepal conducted themselves. The meeting held by the Terai Buddhijivi Samudaya was planned by a sector of people which has always been subject to intense, humiliating discriminations and which today has some serious doubts about the way in which the constitution is being amended currently and which has some very strong and valid points to make about its fate in the current position of political Nepal. Amidst such concentrated issues and demands, it was obvious that the actions of the two presidents would leave a profound impression not only upon the people present in the meeting but also on people everywhere else.

The Madhesis, in all honesty, are not considered people belonging to Nepal. It is a different matter being citizens of a country and belonging to a country. The most prevalent notion about the Madhesis amongst the non-Madhesis is that Madhesis are Indians living in Nepal. Their contributions are not looked upon as contributions from Nepalese people but as contribution from a set of people being allowed to make them. This method of thinking was laid bare most prominently when an Indian actor Rhithik Roshan supposedly spoke against the sentiments of the Nepalese. The Teraian community was then maltreated with shocking inhumanity. The killings of these people established without doubt that the non-Teraians consider the Madhesis as outsiders, and it has remained branded in the minds and remembrance of Madhesis as the pinnacle of discrimination. So Madhav Kumar Nepal stated that people within Nepal ought first to be Nepalese, there was a major reaction amongst the people which cried out NO! Before the people are faithful to their own country, the country has to be faithful to them. The members of a household has to be loyal to a child if they want faith in the child.

A nauseating duality is being practiced in Nepal which everyone must work dutifully to eliminate. The country, and half the population of the country, refuse to give equal status to the lives of the Madhesis, but it is ready as hungry curs to devour the services they provide. A Madhesi doctor remains within the confines of non-Madhesi circle a Dhoti, a Marsiya, a Madhesi, kale etc, etc but his qualities are desired by all.

It is indeed a commendable trait to recognise the qualities of a person, but is it not infinitely more important first to recognise him as a human being?

When Koirala and Nepal left the Terai Buddhijivi Samudaya at its premature stage, they hurt the intellectual prowess and the considerations of an acutely fragile set of people. It is time we learnt from other lands which are being hollowed by the canker of internal discontent. At a crucial point like today when our country is being plagued by innumerable problems and when there are some grave misgivings in the hearts of the people, we cannot afford to fall out with each other. Our strongest strength stands in camaraderie. Public figures like Koirala and Nepal have to stand as hallmarks of this camaraderie, their actions will determine the actions of Nepal. As guardians, it is their duty, their obligation to listen and to solve the grievances of the Madhesis with the same fervour and zeal as they would have done of the other sects. Their walking out of important and touching issue as the issues of the constitution amendment, and the rights the Madhesis seek within the amendment speaks very loudly of the flippancy with which they regarded the event, and in return speaks of the flippancy of their own natures.

Mystery of ‘foreign’ hand (and bodies)

By SHYAM KC

There are allegations that  not all those posing as Maoists and killing Nepalese are Nepalese nationals. The allegations of involvement of foreign personnel in the Maoist offensive first surfaced when the Maoists attacked government positions in Salleri in Solukhumbu district in November last year. The largely ignored allegations were that some of the headless torsos of the fallen Maoists were clearly not those of Nepalese. The bodies whose heads had been chopped off by the surviving Maoists did not even remotely resemble those of typical Nepalese. These allegations were buried in the media hype over the Maoist attack and the media attention paid to the aftermath of the attack.

Understandably, the media directed their attention to the shock and trauma that the Maoist offensive left behind and few had the inclination to dig into the composition of the Maoist attackers. Then came the audacious Maoist attack on Mangalsen, the headquarters of Achham district in west Nepal. In this incident at least, there were several news media which quoted survivors of the offensive as saying that they saw several "non-Nepali looking" persons barking orders and firing at the army helicopters. Their firing prevented the choppers from landing at or near Mangalsen for quite a while.

According to survivors, these people were talking in an alien language. And now come the as yet unpublicised reports that the bodies of a few persons, thought to be Sri Lankan or South India, were recovered. They were reported to have been shot dead in the course of the counter offensive by security forces against the attackers of Mangalsen. In addition, there were photographs in different Nepalese magazines in the past that showed persons identified as aliens imparting training at Maoist training centres. The mystery, of course, keeps on getting deeper and deeper all the time without a solution in sight.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is undertaking what can only be termed an ill-advised six-day official visit to New Delhi at a time when the nation is in the throes of a crisis unparalleled since modern Nepal was founded over 250 years ago. He will have to prove that his India visit is of greater priority than crucial matters at home. He must be able to get India to close all routes and avenues through which terrorist outfits in India help the Maoists undertake their brand of people’s war in Nepal. The inflow of arms and other supplies to the Maoists from across the open and unregulated Nepal-India border needs no elaboration. It is now no longer a secret that the four month truce between July and November last year was used by the Maoists to consolidate their positions and to replenish their lethal arsenal. During this period the government was seen to have become complacent and bending backwards to accommodate all the Maoist demands. The result of that complacency was evident in the Maoist offensives at Dang and Salleri.

Prime Minister Deuba is obviously not going to the Delhi Durbar to pay his customary obeisance there. Nepal does need India’s understanding to fight the Maoist menace. The open border between the two countries has been a source of misunderstanding between the two countries from time to time without ever helping their peoples in any substantial way. The fact that the top leaders of the Nepalese communist parties journeyed to India, without any valid travel documents, to meet and hold parleys with Maoist Supremo "Prachanda" goes to show where the top Maoist leaders find their safe haven.

The recent reports (feebly denied by the Nepali Congress) that party leader Chakra Prasad Banstola, who incidentally belongs to the Koirala faction, met with a top Maoist leader in India goes to show that the whereabouts of the top Maoists echelons are no secret and could easily be identified by the Indian authorities if they so desire. There is also little to speculate about the origins of the trainers for Maoists insurgents, and of the arms and ammunition. Similar was the case when the Nepali Congress waged an armed struggle against the Panchayat government in the 1960’s and later in the 1970’s. This was true when a group aligned to the Nepali Congress hijacked an RNAC Twin Otter aircraft and sought and found safe haven in Indian in 1973.

India also has rightly or wrongly a number of grievances against Nepal, mostly stemming out of the open border. The Indian complaint about alleged ISI agents and explosives finding their way to India is a indication of how the open border is proving more troublesome to both the countries than it has been useful. But much more than India, the open border is causing the Nepalese government a greater number of problems in different sectors, and not merely in the context of the Maoist insurgency.

The foreign hand (and headless bodies) among the felled Maoist ranks must find an answer during Deuba’s India visit which comes at a time when the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee himself is facing difficult times. Given the circumstances in which the Deuba visit is taking place, it is difficult to foresee any meaningful outcome except India’s verbal commitment once more to do everything it can to help Nepal, and Nepal can wait for ages for the top Maoist leaders now said to be in India to be handed over. And therein will lie the failure of the Deuba visit. Neither will the Prime Minister be able to convince the Indian government of the need for immediate dismantling of the newly built Indian dams along the Nepal-India border nor can there be any undoing of the recently concluded protocols in the trade treaty nor indeed can any useful agreement be expected on the water resources front.

The prospect now is that the foreign hand (and bodies sans heads) will hardly make any impact in India. Indeed, during Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh’s meeting with Nepalese journalists during the SAARC summit in January, the two seemed not to know that the top Maoists find safe haven in India. And to think that both Nepal and India are staunch supporters of the international coalition against terrorism! It is earnestly hoped in all quarters that Deuba’s current visit to India will not be a mere ritual that every Nepalese prime minister invariably makes early in his tenure. The Prime Minister owes it to this nation to make this visit a distinctly different one and worth while in the eyes of the common man.