The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is racing against time to meet its target for collecting property tax before the financial year ends on March 31.
The BMC on Monday collected Rs 415 crore of outstanding property tax dues in a single day.
The BMC’s tax collection has now reached over Rs 3,500 crore.
Since March 8 was the deadline to pay property tax for commercial establishments, the BMC has stepped up tax collection.
The civic body has collected over Rs 100 crore per day right from February.
In March alone, the BMC collected around Rs 1,100 crore from property tax defaulters.
The BMC has not only begun attaching the property of defaulters, but has also begun auctioning properties.
The BMC has a total outstanding property tax of close to Rs 20,000 crore.
The civic body is facing a severe cash crunch this year owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and a slew of discounts to builders and contractors.
“We have made a record collection of Rs 415 crore on Monday. In the first week of March we have already collected over Rs 1,100 crore. We are confident that we will meet our revised target of Rs 4,800 crore,” said assistant municipal commissioner, assessment and collection, Dr Sangeeta Hasnale.
“We have created a list of top 100 defaulters in each of the 24 wards and are focusing on recovering property tax from them,” she said.
Officials said that the target of property tax collection was revised to Rs 4,800 crore due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For commercial properties, the deadline to pay tax without any penalty was March 8 and for residential properties the deadline to pay the tax is March end. If they don’t pay, they will have to pay a penalty of 2 per cent,” Dr Hasnale said.
