With two months left for the financial year to end, property tax collections in Mumbai by the civic body stand at Rs 3,859 crore.
The targeted property tax collection for the year as announced in the civic budget 2022-23 by the BMC chief was Rs 7,000 crore. This means around 55% of the targeted property tax has been collected for the year.
However, with the pandemic now having eased, the officials are confident of meeting the collection target, and even surpassing it.
BMC officials said the collection in tax mostly picks pace towards the last two months of the financial year and so there is no reason to be concerned yet.
This year’s property tax collection is also slightly higher than last time when at the same time the collections stood at Rs. 3,738 crore. In financial year 2021-22 the total collection stood Rs 5,792 crore. This was exceeding its target to recover Rs 5,400 crore and overachieving the same by Rs 392 crore. According to civic data, last financial year the highest recovery of Rs 538 crore was made from K/East which covers Andheri East, Jogeshwari.
Prior to it in the pandemic year, property tax collections had taken a major hit as civic data shows that collections in fiscal year 2019-20 was only Rs 3,735 crore.
A senior civic official said already those flats measuring up to 500 sq ft of carpet area are exempt from property tax. “Owing to this the BMC collection by around Rs 500 crore has taken a hit. However, this has not deterred us in any way and we are ensuring that collections are happening on a timely basis. We will also be acting against defaulters whose bills are pending,” said the official.
Former corporators are of the opinion that at times BMC does not send citizens their tax bills on time which also leads to loss of revenue.
