Struggle against tax rise put off after consensus

RATNANAGAR, Aug 16: The Ratnanagar municipality and agitating seven parties led by Nepali Congress (NC) have reached an 11-point charter of consensus on tax adjustment, putting to an end to the struggle waged to protest rise in tax.

The consensus to this effect was reached last night during the talks between the two sides. A committee headed by Ratnanagr municipality’s deputy mayor Bimala Dawadi comprising experts held dialogue with agitating parties and agreed to make adjustments on taxes, informed talks team member Lal Bahadur Bhatta.

With this, tax adjustment will be made based on the taxation of the fiscal 2018/19. “The municipality will collect taxes as per its decision of increment now but later it will be as per the review made by the committee. An agreement was made to adjust or return taxes to services recipients if found high charged”, said Bhatta.

Among other points of consensus include discouraging purchase of luxurious goods at municipality, sale of scraps through auction process, non-discrimination to town dwellers, recruitment of human resource through due process, implementing project up to Rs 3 million through users and big through tender process and non-ignorance to municipal level political parties.

The political parties of the municipality had been on agitation for the last four days demanding withdrawal of tax increase decision. RSS