With just one month left for the current financial year 2023-24 to end, the BMC started sending property tax bills on Monday. The bills were delayed due to legal complexities in BMC's retrospective tax assessment. Also, the ordinance for the issuance of bills was signed by the governor on February 5, after which the soft copies of the two bills were issued on the civic website. However, the civic body has collected just Rs 708 crores of targeted property tax of Rs 4,500 crore in this fiscal.
Bill hikes
The BMC issued security/ad-hoc bills, with a 20% hike in December 2023. After receiving flak from the opposition and the citizens, the civic authorities withdrew the provisional bills and clarified that there would be no hike in the property tax in the current fiscal year.
Still, the issuance of bills was delayed since the civic body required the approval from the governor. The state cabinet gave a nod to issue the property tax bills and a Government Resolution (GR) was issued two weeks back. Ashwini Joshi, additional municipal commissioner said, "We have issued soft copies on our website and the bills will be on the basis of the bills in the previous year. The citizens will get a month's time to pay property tax by March 31."
Property tax
Property tax is the second-highest revenue source for the civic body. The revenue from property tax for the current financial year has been revised to Rs. 4,500 crore from the initial estimate of Rs. 6,000 crore. However, the BMC's assessor and collection department has so far been able to collect Rs. 708 crore of property tax from April 1, 2023, to February 25, 2024.
"Our officials were given a target to trace big defaulters and recover the dues from them. More than 3,000 crores of arrears are yet to be recovered from previous years. We are hopeful to achieve the target of the current fiscal year," said a senior civic official. The taxpayers will get just one month to pay their bills, after which they will have to pay 2% of interest on the bill as a late fee per month, said civic sources.
