Private schools want property tax lowered

PESHAWAR: Private members of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority (PSRA) have urged own managing director to look into the hike in the property tax on private schools across the province.

In a letter to the PSRA managing director, the two private members of the regulatory authority Anas Takreem Kakakhel and Fazlullah Daudzai observed that private schools were contributing to the promotion of education on the one hand and supporting the government on the other.

The government, they believed, was not extending any financial assistance to any of the private schools where around 10 million students are enrolled.

They said that 99 percent of the private schools charged Rs1,000 to Rs5,500 fee per student each month. The amount was far lesser than the cost of monthly charges of one student at the government schools where Rs7,300 are spent on each student on a monthly basis, they argued.

They said there were more than 20,000 private schools in the province where millions of students were enrolled and some 800,000 teach and non-teaching staff was employed.

However, instead of supporting the private schools, the government is bent on creating hurdles for them, they said. The latest hurdle, according to them, was the unbearable hike in property tax on private schools. They explained that the private schools had been paying property tax at the rate of Rs3 per square foot since 1999.

However, in 2019, 1000 percent to 1300 percent increase was imposed on the private schools, which is not possible for them to pay.

The authorities have done categorisation of the locations. The schools falling in the A-1 category are required to pay property tax at the rate of Rs39 per square foot, while those in the A category would pay Rs 30per square foot, they said. They demanded the managing director to reconsider the unbearable increase in the property tax of the private schools and provide them with relief.