694 Jaipur hotels listed on online booking sites evading UD tax; JMC begins recovery of dues

Jaipur: Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) conducted ‘online investigation’ and found 694 hotels which were accepting bookings online, but not paying urban development (UD) tax. These hotels don’t even exist in JMC records. After finding these hotels violating JMC norms with regard to UD tax, the JMC is all set to send these hotels notices. If these hotels pay their dues, the total revenue from the UD tax will go up to Rs 20 crore par year.

“As per our records the total number of hotels in Jaipur was 524. But it seemed that the number was low. So what we did is that we started an online investigation and found many hotels listed on online sites such as MakeMyTrip, Trivago, Goibibo, Oyo etc. the number of hotels in Jaipur is now 1218. These hotels were trying to evade UD tax. A physical inspection will be conducted by JMC officials in the coming days and we will make them pay UD tax,” said Jaipur Mayor Vishnu Lata.

He added that the civic body expects additional revenue of Rs 6 crore, but it will go up to Rs 20 crore.

The JMC officials also found hospitals which were not paying UD tax. There were only 399 hospitals as per JMC records, but now the number of hotels has gone up to 795.

“We will continue to discover more such properties online. Whenever these properties advertise themselves online, we will come to know about their existence,” said a JMC officer. He added that a dedicated team of IT officials has been assigned to keep a tab on online listings of commercial establishments and tally them with JMC records.

Hotels in different JMC zones:

• Motidoongari: 122
• Hawamahal west: 25
• Hawamahal east: 41
• Vidhyadhar Nagar: 259
• Civil Lines: 354
• Sanganer: 161
• Mansarovar: 95
• Amber: 94
• JMC headquarters area: 67