Intel Inside, Garbage Outside! Intel owes BBMP Rs 34Cr in Taxes
Pay Up or Smell the Stink! As a ‘gentle’ reminder for the property tax due to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the civic agency parked its garbage trucks outside Intel’s office in a bid to collect Rs 34 crore property tax owed by Intel.
Mangaluru: If a common man had owed a few hundreds or thousands in property taxes to the City Corporation, the officials would have sent repeated reminder notices or would have made frequent calls to make the tax payment soon. But when it comes to mega companies owing big bucks, like lakhs or crores, the City corporation wake up only at the last minute. Here is a story how Bengaluru City Corporation came up with a plan to collect the pending property taxes by parking a few garbage dump trucks in front of the Intel office building. Kind of funny, but seems like it worked as Intel promised to settle the owed taxes soon.
Employees of US tech giant Intel probably felt they were in the wrong place when they saw garbage trucks lined up at their doorstep in India’s Silicon Valley. City officials threatened to dump the trash if Intel refused to pay its huge property tax bill. According to Officials from Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), an administrative body responsible for civic and infrastructural assets, a committee on taxation and finance found that Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd had defaulted on tax payments between 2007 and 2008 amounting to Rs 34 crores ($5.1 million).
Sources reveal that even after repeated notices to Intel appeared to have fallen on deaf ears, so creative BBMP officials decided to send the garbage trucks to its premises with a crystal clear message: pay up now or smell the stink. The standoff was resolved and the garbage trucks were taken back after Intel authorities gave a written undertaking that they would pay half of the dues claimed by BBMP, by August 28, as per an interim order of Karnataka High Court.
It is learnt that Intel has been paying property taxes on the basis that its facility was not air conditioned, while BBMP says its office is centrally air-conditioned. Last month, the US firm appealed its tax bill in India’s Karnataka High Court, but the judiciary insisted that Intel deposit half of the taxes owed with BBMP. As might be expected, Twitterers have rushed to applaud the effective tax-recovery method used by India’s local authorities.
Input from YahooNews
This is exactly why India continues to be a third world country. Is this how any mature, responsible society deals with property tax issue? What’s the point of having judiciary system if this is how our officials can bully reputed business houses into paying money? I am not here to defend Intel. In fact, most of these multi-national companies are known for avoiding taxes using various loopholes. But this is not the way to deal with those issues. This proves how Indian authorities, leadership and public lack a sense of maturity in handling these conflicts in a professional way!!