India’s richest civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has a total outstanding property tax of nearly INR 20,000 crores in the city. Sharing the information, a senior civic official said most dues are from bulk generators like builders, hoteliers and commercial complex owners, in some cases since 2010.
However, it is understood that the civic body has faced a severe cash crunch in 2020 due to COVID-19 and a slew of discounts to builders and contractors. Hence, BMC will soon attach and auction properties of defaulters, reports suggested.
It missed its property tax collection target of INR 5,300 crores this year, and so far collected only INR 950 crores. It has time till March-end to recover INR 4,300 crores.
As on December 2020, BMC has to recover a total property tax of INR 19,950 crores. The civic body officials said that along with octroi, abolished property tax is the biggest source of income for BMC, which comes to around 24 per cent. BMC has failed to achieve its target of property tax collection from 2017.
In 2020, the BMC had set a target of INR 6,788 crores for property tax collection for this year. But the corporation managed to collect around INR 950 crores due to lockdown and lack of clarity on collecting taxes from below 500 sq ft homes.
Now the BMC will collect tax, except the general tax component, from below 500 sq ft homes. There was to be a revision in tax rates this year, but it was shelved by the state government, so our target came down by 17 per cent. Our revised target is around INR 5,300 crores, said the official.
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