The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which has faced criticism for delaying property tax bills for 2023-24, has said that it will not fine tax payers for bills paid after March 31.
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Taxpayers will get time till May 25 to pay the bills, the civic body has said.
BMC had issued the bills in December 2023 with a 20 per cent hike in rates. A case against the retrospective levy of property taxes is still being heard in the Supreme Court.
The municipal corporation withdrew the bills after the hue and cry over the hike and released soft copies of the bills without any hike on its website on February 27, after getting the approval of the state cabinet.
However, taxpayers protested against the delay and refused to pay the penal- ty for bills paid after March 31. Usually, property owners get 90 days from the time of receiving the bills to pay the tax and taxpayers have to pay 2 per cent interest per month on the payable amount for delay in payment after March 31, according to rules.
Civic body officials said they have decided to waive the penalty as the bills were issued in February, which has led to taxpayers not getting the 90-day window to pay the dues.
The bills were delayed because of legal complexities in BMC’s retrospective tax assessment.
The deadline to pay property tax for the year 2023-24 is extended till May 25. So taxpayers will not be charged 2 per cent interest even if they are paying after March 31, said a senior civic official.
Property tax is the second-highest revenue source for the BMC. The revenue from property tax for the current financial year has been revised to ₹4,500 crore from the initial estimate of ₹6,000 crore.
However, the civic body has collected just Rs750 crore of its property tax target of ₹4,500 crore this fiscal and the assessor and collection department has thus to collect ₹3,750 crore.
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We could collect ₹50 crore of propertytax in just two days after the bills were issued. So we are hoping to achieve the target by May, the official said.
